tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46040117099086237642024-03-20T03:09:48.585+11:00Resistance is futileLocutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.comBlogger232125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-29921895751989062532024-02-01T18:13:00.002+11:002024-02-01T18:13:53.579+11:00<html>
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<title>Resistance is futile: Authors' Mistakes #34 - Alastair Reynolds</title>
</head>
<body>
After almost three and a half years of silence, I post a new article to critise a very famous and acclaimed author.
Perhaps I will resume posting more regularly, but I cannot ignore the Reynolds's blunder. And even before
reading the book to the end!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjmHZozYi_pczKDj-fdEJIpChTgs90yhZjVsmXUah2NpfIsskez22cgL7Jb-jAgDPfv1B8Ha3pIB0K1x3id7_onsUdH1HYNGAoV30A2BFubE1Ei2PFLfsLRLOj2tnfP74Zywg5pta4HbuQQfpqfsNS6eAwprXe-Hnn25ZI3w39j_uBFZxVOTQ50AX5qiu/s2339/On-the-Steel-Breeze-cover.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="2339" data-original-width="1527" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjmHZozYi_pczKDj-fdEJIpChTgs90yhZjVsmXUah2NpfIsskez22cgL7Jb-jAgDPfv1B8Ha3pIB0K1x3id7_onsUdH1HYNGAoV30A2BFubE1Ei2PFLfsLRLOj2tnfP74Zywg5pta4HbuQQfpqfsNS6eAwprXe-Hnn25ZI3w39j_uBFZxVOTQ50AX5qiu/s320/On-the-Steel-Breeze-cover.jpg"/></a></div>
<br />
On page 129 of my UK edition (ISBN 978-0-575-09047), one of the main characters embarks on
a trip to Venus.<br />
<br />
Talking about the space liner, Reynolds states: "Huge millwheel parts of it
were counter-rotating, simulating various planetary gravities." This means that no artificial
gravity is available in the future that Reynolds describes.<br />
<br />
In the next paragraph, Reynolds tells us that the trip to Venus will take three days, and this is
where he screws up (pardon my French!)<br />
<br />
The problem is that Venus is very far: between 38 and 261 million km. To get there as fast
as possible, we can hypothesise that the liner will accelerate for the first half of
the journey and decelerate for the second half. We can easily calculate the acceleration according to the formula:
<br />
<big> a = D/2 / square(T/2)</big>
<br />
where D is the Earth-Venus distance and T is the transit time. I will save you the details of
the calculation, but the end result is that, depending of the relative positions of the planets
along their orbits, the passengers will be subjected to an acceleration of between 0.23 and 1.6
Earth's gravities.<br />
<br />
This means that you can forget the counter-rotating rings! The passengers would be pushed against
the rear-facing walls of their cabins with a force not lower than 1/4 and perhaps as high as
1 and 1/2 of their weight!<br />
<br />
Sorry Alastair!
<br/><br/>
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<br/>
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2020/08/resistance-is-futile-authors-mistakes.html">Lee
Child: 61 Hours</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2020/05/authors-mistakes-32-lee-child.html">Lee
Child: Never Go Back</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2015/09/authors-mistakes-31-lee-child.html">Lee
Child: Personal</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child: Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes: Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman: Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child: The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack: Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford: pocalypse</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva: The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy: Locked On</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David: After Earth</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston: Impact</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian: The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci: Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI iami</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack Greene & Alessandro Massignani</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-28-peter-james.html">Peter James</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-29-pwarren-mstreeter.html">P.Warren
& M.Streeter</a><br />
<a href="https://blog.zambon.com.au/2014/07/authors-mistakes-30-nigel-cawthorne.html">Nigel
Cawthorne</a><br />
</body>
</html>Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-3026229510593420822020-08-20T15:42:00.000+10:002020-08-20T15:42:50.824+10:00<html>
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<title>Resistance is futile: Authors' Mistakes #33 - Lee Child</title>
</head>
<body>
Once more, I feel compelled to criticise an author who's actually one
of my favourite.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAiJlNHmhsHRVIP18fR8FzV7PYNZeQQ3OEERRrX0G7jj5wwIM_7tlI2HwHI810fjA6-I-u0YKyAsSzch_KijuQOeM52GeNrND5VBkEutQM97m_pxj61q1LR2XEwULpdlo1_GbB77v7cjGo/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAiJlNHmhsHRVIP18fR8FzV7PYNZeQQ3OEERRrX0G7jj5wwIM_7tlI2HwHI810fjA6-I-u0YKyAsSzch_KijuQOeM52GeNrND5VBkEutQM97m_pxj61q1LR2XEwULpdlo1_GbB77v7cjGo/s320/cover.jpg" width="205" height="320" data-original-width="222" data-original-height="346" /></a></div>
<br />
On page 351 of my UK edition (ISBN 978-0-553-82556-5), Lee Child
tells us of a fuel tank at a bottom of a 200 feet deep well (more than
60m).<br />
<br />
Then, at the end of the story, he describes an operation in which the
fuel is pumped up to the surface and then back into the well. The action
is an integral part of the story, but it is physically impossible.<br />
<br />
The problem is that to suck <b><i>up</i></b> a liquid from a tank, a pump
dips a pipe into the tank and removes air from it, so that the atmospheric
pressure on the rest of the liquid pushes it up into the pipe. That is,
the liquid moves upward because of the pressure differential between the
inside and the outside of the pipe. But the air pressure at sea level is
equivalent to the pressure exercised by 10m of water. As a result, even
if you were to remove all the air from the top of a pipe, you wouldn't
succeed in pulling up water by more than about 10m<br />
<br />
And yet, Lee claims that the pump drains a tank 60m below the surface...<br />
<br />
The density of jet fuel is about 80% of that of water, but that only means
that you can pump it up by about 13m, not 60m.<br />
<br />
Now, how far up you can push a liquid only depends on the power of your
pump and on the materials involved, but then, the pump must be at the bottom
and pushing, not at the top and pulling.<br />
<br />
You could also create pools every 10m of height, but that would require at
least a handful of pumps to lift fuel by 60m.<br />
<br />
However you turn it, Lee screwed up. How disappointing!
<br/><br/>
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<br/>
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2020/05/authors-mistakes-32-lee-child.html">Lee
Child: Never Go Back</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2015/09/authors-mistakes-31-lee-child.html">Lee
Child: Personal</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child: Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes: Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman: Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child: The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack: Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford: pocalypse</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva: The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy: Locked On</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David: After Earth</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston: Impact</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian: The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci: Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI iami</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack Greene & Alessandro Massignani</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-28-peter-james.html">Peter James</a><br />
<a href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-29-pwarren-mstreeter.html">P.Warren
& M.Streeter</a><br />
<a href="https://blog.zambon.com.au/2014/07/authors-mistakes-30-nigel-cawthorne.html">Nigel
Cawthorne</a><br />
</body>
</html>
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-81054761814804108652020-05-07T16:58:00.000+10:002020-05-07T16:58:03.137+10:00Authors' Mistakes #32 - Lee Child<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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<title>Resistance is futile: Authors' Mistakes #32 - Lee Child</title>
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<body>
I thought I would never write again about authors' mistakes. But I just
finished reading a book that really annoyed me:<br/>
<br/>
<center>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXVr1Vfuxzp3BCpYaIhgUdhSNqoM8LKr2XnTO-xYEw9J5XcXGcP1uHSN5NCq7LPocI5acADhKDBDi-26AWROEv7zrXpQ7FYUmUi2t1udsg2LQMqYxEiOASeUyOCpbNQrpnbWJKMQlwfRn8/s1600/2020-05-07+Authors%2527+Mistakes+%252332+-+Lee+Child.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXVr1Vfuxzp3BCpYaIhgUdhSNqoM8LKr2XnTO-xYEw9J5XcXGcP1uHSN5NCq7LPocI5acADhKDBDi-26AWROEv7zrXpQ7FYUmUi2t1udsg2LQMqYxEiOASeUyOCpbNQrpnbWJKMQlwfRn8/s320/2020-05-07+Authors%2527+Mistakes+%252332+-+Lee+Child.jpg" width="205" height="320" data-original-width="320" data-original-height="499" /></a>
</center>
<br/>
On page 118 of my Australian edition (ISBN 978-0-553-82554-1), Lee Child
writes:<br/>
<blockquote>Would Susan Turner get a new Lawyer that afternoon?
Answer: either yes or no. Fifty-fifty. Like heads or tails, like flipping
a coin. Then: Would that new lawyer be a white male? Answer: either yes or no.
Fifty-fifty. And then: Would first Major Sullivan or subsequently
Captain Edmonds be in the buolding at the same time as Susan Turner's
new lawyer? Assuming she got one? Answer: either yes or no. Fifty-fifty.
And finally: Would all three lawyers have come in through the same gate
as each other? Answer: yes or no. Fifty-fifty.<br/>
Four yes-no answers, each one of them a separate event all its own. Each
one of them a perfect fifty-fifty chance in its own right. But four correct
answers in a row were six-in-a-hundred improbability.
</blockquote>
<p>
The only correct statement in these two paragraphs is that if you toss
four times a coin you have a six-in-a-hundred probability of getting four
heads or four tails (actually, 6.25%, but let's not be too fussy!)</p>
<p>
All the rest is nonsense because the fact that there are two alternatives
doesn't mean that they are equally probable. Child's
misconception is that if you don't have enough information about two
mutually-exclusive events you can assign to them equal probability.
</p>
<p>
It is a frequent misconception, but it is appalling that an author like
Lee Child holds it and reinforces it in his millions of readers. When you
are so famous, you have the responsibility of not stating bullshit.</p>
<p>
And he restates the same misconception several times throughout the novel.
For example, on page 465 he writes:</p>
<blockquote>'It's always fifty-fifty, Pete. Like tossing a coin. Either
I'm wrong, or I'm right, either you bring us back, or you don't, either
Deputy Chiefs are what they say they are, or they're not. Always fifty-fifty.
One thing or the other is always true.'
</blockquote>
<p>
You can express most situations in terms of mutually exclusive
alternatives, but that says nothing about the probability of either of
them occurring. For example, when you go for a walk,
either you are hit by a lightning or you are not. That certainly doesn't
mean that the probability of being hit by a lightning is fifty-fifty!</p>
<p>
According to Child, as Reacher says on page 480, 'Fifty-fifty, [...]
like everything else in the world.'</p>
<p>
As I said, it is appalling.</p>
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2015/09/authors-mistakes-31-lee-child.html">Lee
Child: Personal</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child: Die Trying</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes: Double Jeopardy</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman: Lost in Space</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: Extreme Measures</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child: The Visitor</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: A Noble Radiance</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow Never Dies</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: American Assassin</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack: Master of Rome</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford: pocalypse</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva: The Fallen Angel</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy: Locked On</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David: After Earth</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston: Impact</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian: The Most Human Human</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: Fatal Remedies</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci: Zero Day</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI iami</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack Greene & Alessandro Massignani</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-28-peter-james.html">Peter James</a><br>
<a
href="https://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-29-pwarren-mstreeter.html">P.Warren
& M.Streeter</a><br>
<a
href="https://blog.zambon.com.au/2014/07/authors-mistakes-30-nigel-cawthorne.html">Nigel
Cawthorne</a><br>
</body>
</html>
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-32965696173925055252020-04-09T16:31:00.000+10:002020-04-09T16:31:20.548+10:00COVID-19 infection distribution - the government is wrong<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
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<title>COVID-19 infection distribution - the government is wrong</title>
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The Australian government and the Chief Medical Officer,
<a href="https://www.health.gov.au/about-us/who-we-are/leadership#chief-medical-officer"
>Professor Brendan Murphy</a>, have been stating for weeks that by
depressing/flattening the infection curves we will cause the infection
to last longer. That is, with a low peak in the curves, the
pandemic will be resolved later than if we have a high peak.
They based their opinion on models shown in graphs like this (from the report
<a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/impact-of-covid-19-in-australia-ensuring-the-health-system-can-respond-summary-report.pdf"
>Impact of COVID-19 in Australia</a>):
<br/>
<br/>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Pgkm_Dzf_asdvRiwz2dR0wCF1KE3M30ciVNKmpImPDw4g7XUqinv4WkGCUm-LGxtRxqFnltUWJhmCpueJNYgWahFYgv38Gn0vVnsu2ruOMbKnu78fn1hXviFDnqPt4CTetsS_NqLEuK4/s1600/AU_Gov_COVID-19_scenarios+750.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Pgkm_Dzf_asdvRiwz2dR0wCF1KE3M30ciVNKmpImPDw4g7XUqinv4WkGCUm-LGxtRxqFnltUWJhmCpueJNYgWahFYgv38Gn0vVnsu2ruOMbKnu78fn1hXviFDnqPt4CTetsS_NqLEuK4/s1600/AU_Gov_COVID-19_scenarios+750.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="453" /></a><br/>
<br/>
Indeed, the plot presented by the government seems to show that
lower curves (i.e., with fewer ICU beds at their peak) are wider (i.e., they
take longer times to go down to zero). But the plot is misleading.
It is an exercise in Statistic gone wild, in which
the government's "scientists" have played with the numbers
while losing sight of what they mean.<br/>
<br/>
How can fewer cases at any given time prolong the duration of the
pandemic? It is pure nonsense that results from blindly accepting the
results spewed out by a computer.<br/>
<br/>
For one thing,
<b><i>there is no reason for the curves to be symmetrical</i></b>.
On the contrary, there are reasons for assuming that they will have
a "long tail" due to
overseas arrivals and probably other channels of re-infections.
This is happening in China and South Korea (see below).<br/>
<br/>
In fact, the two halves of the curves are most likely going to
be different. See for example what has happened in China and Korea
(to prepare my plots, I relied on the data provided by the World
Health Organisation in their
<a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/"
>daily situation reports on COVID-19</a>):<br/>
<br/>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgepcS7SgnPK6B7OXPeX3fYzRUMFT4GN7D5ETwn69D_bdEL9W8CqpgomJ44MHQ9tmjTq4p0SXFI0IcsbJv8zHflG3lbmUo4isCz2rHnLH9QbkjdRVgOcxLHqeK069SLZKHxflOTDFgbX54B/s1600/CN-KR.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgepcS7SgnPK6B7OXPeX3fYzRUMFT4GN7D5ETwn69D_bdEL9W8CqpgomJ44MHQ9tmjTq4p0SXFI0IcsbJv8zHflG3lbmUo4isCz2rHnLH9QbkjdRVgOcxLHqeK069SLZKHxflOTDFgbX54B/s1600/CN-KR.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="466" /></a><br/>
<br/>
Both coutries experienced a rapid increase of daily new cases,
followed by declines thanks to the mitigation actions.
Note how neither country has managed to completely squash
the number of daily new cases.<br/>
<br/>
The government's plot shows estimates of ICU beds, while my plot
shows daily new cases. But, as I explain later in this article, the two numbers are linked
to each other. If I had plotted the data for ICU beds in China and Korea,
the shape of the curves would have not been substantially different (as long
as the ICUs managed to remain below saturation, as that would
have cut the top of the curves).<br/>
<br/>
<b><i>That in the government's plot flatter curves are shown farther
away from day zero is meaningless and confusing</i></b>.
What has the shape of the curve to do with when a pandemic begins
affecting a country? Please!<br/>
<br/>
As another example of curve asymmetry, let's compare Australia and Korea:<br/>
<br/>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVc9hXXZq-39f2fQ839tWqebPTY6HE6TnO6qHp3anqMqPXKiZMmD7fPGDVfawdDRGR2Cn3yKvwZdSZa2t_KDXipkyz4jE33VqksC3AOaq0eUZcVH97Zm2JiVzp5EALO2BA5MBYsfKlSx2/s1600/AU-KR.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVc9hXXZq-39f2fQ839tWqebPTY6HE6TnO6qHp3anqMqPXKiZMmD7fPGDVfawdDRGR2Cn3yKvwZdSZa2t_KDXipkyz4jE33VqksC3AOaq0eUZcVH97Zm2JiVzp5EALO2BA5MBYsfKlSx2/s1600/AU-KR.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="466" /></a><br/>
<br/>
In this plot, the curves show the numbers of new daily cases averaged
over one week (three days on either side). To facilitate the comparison
of the two curves, I have also removed from the plots the initial days of
the infection, in which the numbers of daily new cases in each country
were very few (four or less) and sporadic.<br/>
<br/>
I chose Australia and Korea because they reached comparable numbers of
maximum daily new cases and both are clearly past the peaks of their
respective distributions.
Notice how the number of new cases grew in Korea more rapidly than
in Australia while the descending sides of the curves are very similar.
In any case, contrary to what our government tells us, the curves are far
from being symmetrical.<br/>
<br/>
That the government's plot is an exercise in statistics
becomes even clearer when you look at the
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution"
>Wikipedia page on the normal distribution</a>:<br/>
<br/>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjK7XlkrfL4biHFJ4lyYx-EnncK9IDOrrihPfARtlyPWMj92nVKE3HiX_0eMdb2vWRzBfyB3uMFz6OfDaOzB74H4zl0-Qlw-DSP1z-QQ4oCMBxyc-5bDpNDSb1zkRAJK068wfVOgjDJBfE/s1600/1280px-Normal_Distribution_PDF.svg+750.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjK7XlkrfL4biHFJ4lyYx-EnncK9IDOrrihPfARtlyPWMj92nVKE3HiX_0eMdb2vWRzBfyB3uMFz6OfDaOzB74H4zl0-Qlw-DSP1z-QQ4oCMBxyc-5bDpNDSb1zkRAJK068wfVOgjDJBfE/s1600/1280px-Normal_Distribution_PDF.svg+750.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="479" /></a><br/>
<br/>
This must be where the government's overpaid modellers have got
their ideas...<br/>
<br/>
Now let's explain how the number of ICU beds
and the daily number of new cases are linked.<br/>
<br/>
If we get 1,000 new cases today and 1,000 new cases tomorrow, each group
will require a similar number of ICU beds after a week or so.<br/>
The
<a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/04/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-infographic_4.pdf"
>current status</a> (2020-04-09 13:45) provided by the Department of Health
tells us that in Australia we have a total of 6,013 cases and 87 patients
currently in intensive care.<br/>
<br/>
That said, you cannot simply calculate that 1,000 new cases will require
more or less 87/6013 =
15 additional ICU beds a week later because to determine the total number
of ICU beds needed, we need to take into account for how long each
patient remains in ICU: the longer the patient stays, the more beds we
need. Furthermore, sadly, we also have to take into account the number of
deaths (currently 50 in Australia). Careful modelling is required to
prepare reliable projections.<br/>
<br/>
A critical issue in modelling the pandemic is how to estimate future
numbers of new infections,
especially when considering that some infected people have no symptoms
an can therefore spread the virus undetected. The only way to get hold
of such community-based transmission is to test lots of people. This is why
the WHO's Director has been promoting "testing, testing, testing".
Fortunately, our government got it right, relentlessly testing as
many people as possible, the only limitation being the number of
testers and the availability of test kits. A better knowledge
of community-transmitted cases will result in better models.<br/>
<br/>
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Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-90593395845409942082020-03-24T15:05:00.000+11:002020-03-24T15:20:56.346+11:00COVID-19 - flattening the curve<html>
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My last post was in September 2015. Somehow, after that, I lost interest in
writing my sermons and stepped off the soap box. But the way in which
politicians and journalists speak abut "flattening the curve" when talking
about COVID-19 as if it were obvious to the vast majority of the public
prompted me to attempt an explanation of what "flattening the curve" actually
means. It still involves logarithmic plots, which many will find confusing,
but it might help.<br />
<br />
I want to post this article as quickly as possible. My apologies for the
typos I will inevitably make.<br />
<br />
Here are the curves the politicians are talking about, drawn for China,
Korea, Iran, and Japan:<br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGgM8abppfBVGjgH8KhLaed5siFez3e9lUi7LF8a7YUVL55tgx606lpinWwue7-IpiiJCH7UYVSb4eXfysUPndlRJnxHYeK9M9mjiWIl7sTCOtBiqVTiCRtBbRgXkheq12WbsEftlKYhdc/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+down+750.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGgM8abppfBVGjgH8KhLaed5siFez3e9lUi7LF8a7YUVL55tgx606lpinWwue7-IpiiJCH7UYVSb4eXfysUPndlRJnxHYeK9M9mjiWIl7sTCOtBiqVTiCRtBbRgXkheq12WbsEftlKYhdc/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+down+750.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="470" /></a>
<br>
The numbers at the bottom indicate the days since the World Health Organisation
has started reporting data on COVID-19 on 2020-01-21. You can see them on the
<a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/">
WHO web site</a>. For this plot, I have used all the reports till #63,
published today (2020-03-23).<br />
<br />
The numbers on the left tell you how many new cases were reported for each day.
In fact, this is not entirely true, because the plot shows weekly averages
to avoid wild fluctuations. That is, every point of each curve is averaged
with the preceding and following three points. Therefore, these plots are
useful to see the trends, rather than individual values.<br />
<br />
The numbers of daily new cases of all countries represented in this plot
reached a maximum before starting to decline. It means that the drastic
measures taken in those countries managed to bring the contagoin under
control. Notice that Korea and Japan have an initial "bump" followed by
a systematic increase. This could be due to the transition from imported
cases to community-transmitted cases, but it is only my speculation and I
could be completely wrong.<br />
<br />
More importantly, note that China and Korea are experiencing a resurgence
of new cases in the past week or so. This could be due to the relaxing
of the containment measures or, as China has stated in several occasions,
to infected residents returning home from abroad, thereby carrying the
virus back home. In any case, unless great attention is paid, the contagion
could flare up again, like a non-completely extinguished bush fire.<br />
<br />
While China, Korea, and Iran experienced a rapid increase in new cases,
Japan quickly managed to bring the increases under control, as shown by
the fact that the curve is "flatter" (first hint at what "flattening the
curve" means, although it will become clear at the end).<br />
<br />
Let's have a look at Germany, Italy, and Spain:<br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3MCJ-ZofZI3MQ2eZ_m_466YKVl74NYTpm7dROe3JL5vPCetLSLso_WMQROJSiZmugwx0JDkDA1UDgYYn1oGCsh3GstSvfBFFuwIGQBCZ0ANtUgRPDGaWaneiZPS_tEX9VEiCrHwNW5fMA/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+improving+750.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3MCJ-ZofZI3MQ2eZ_m_466YKVl74NYTpm7dROe3JL5vPCetLSLso_WMQROJSiZmugwx0JDkDA1UDgYYn1oGCsh3GstSvfBFFuwIGQBCZ0ANtUgRPDGaWaneiZPS_tEX9VEiCrHwNW5fMA/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+improving+750.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="470" /></a>
<br>
The curves are bent but haven't reached a maximum. This means that the
measures adopted by these countries has started to bite, but the situation
will become worse before beginning to improve. In other words, the bending
of the curves indicate that the number of daily new cases is still increasing,
although less rapidly. The days in which the number of new infections will
begin to decrease is still to come.<br />
<br />
Finally, let's have a look at Australia and the United States:<br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgofRosapAYOd-ZGvG3lx4FpMzUTl7uU5NDlPw1IqRXFisbSbp4jDEQf6qGiUGguNwAN7iYaq9gZhqJmatRaTnM9iaZOynm8ZoSHr1vybC9BC1AH0oslHoXw2joVQMvmH9mmqVPYojD9p0Q/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+up+750.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgofRosapAYOd-ZGvG3lx4FpMzUTl7uU5NDlPw1IqRXFisbSbp4jDEQf6qGiUGguNwAN7iYaq9gZhqJmatRaTnM9iaZOynm8ZoSHr1vybC9BC1AH0oslHoXw2joVQMvmH9mmqVPYojD9p0Q/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+up+750.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="470" /></a>
<br>
Do you see how the lines are straight up? These countries are
still in the "exploding" phase of the contagion. In semi-logarithmic plots,
straight lines mean exponential growth. It means that the number of new cases
is growing exponentially. The situation in the USA is worse than
in Australia because in Australia the daily increase is around a couple of
hundred, while in the USA they get several few thousand new cases per day.<br />
<br />
The last plot I want to show you is of the total number of cases, rather than
of the number of daily new cases:<br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgleNaIhoVz_wX00Ffs7pk5ivk0H6-ZiDlErHeQpwILQAUS2zTcvXgEmsfYnmjItYyecsN-WW99aKniASxkgR_Q2mMDoks4v9MdavQ66fRqSfc2xo6iQGGKAX5JvM27tf8WqR5_rWYOgZKa/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+totals+750.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgleNaIhoVz_wX00Ffs7pk5ivk0H6-ZiDlErHeQpwILQAUS2zTcvXgEmsfYnmjItYyecsN-WW99aKniASxkgR_Q2mMDoks4v9MdavQ66fRqSfc2xo6iQGGKAX5JvM27tf8WqR5_rWYOgZKa/s1600/2020-03-24+COVID-19+-+flattening+the+curve+-+63+totals+750.png" data-original-width="750" data-original-height="480" /></a>
<br>
First of all, notice that the numbers on the left now reach 100,000. For
those with knowledge of Mathematics, I will say that these curves are the
integral of those shown in the first three plots. That is, these curves
show the areas under the previous curves. Perhaps not surprisingly, the bottom
curve of this fourth plot is that of Japan, which is the country with the
lowest number of daily new infections.<br />
<br />
As I already said, a straight line represents an exponential growth. The thin
grey lines are there for reference, and tell you in practical terms how to
read the country-specific curves. The slope of the lowest (dashed) thin line
represents a doubling of the total number of cases every 10 days. As you
can see, Japan managed to contain their total number of cases around that
figure, as the curve for Japan is almost parallel to the 10-day-doubling line.<br />
<br />
The other thin lines, closer and closer to the vertical, represent doublings
of total number of cases every 5, 4, 3, and 2 days. As you can see, the curves
of most of the countries shown are clustered around the 2-day-doubling line,
the only exception being Australia, which is close to the 3-day-doubling line.<br />
<br />
These are the curves that the governments try to flatten with their measures
(some might refer to the curves shown in the first three plots, but if you
flatten one, you also flatten the other).
Here, like in the first three plots, you can clearly see that China
and Korea have managed to flatten their curves, while the USA and Australia
are still shooting straight up.<br />
<br />
To give you a better idea of what a 2-day-doubling means, consider that
each 100 infected people become 1131 after one week, 12,800
after two weeks, and 144,815 cases after three weeks. Staggering numbers.
With 10-day-doublings, the initial 100 cases become 162 after one week,
264 after two weeks, and 429 after three weeks. This is the difference
betweem Italy, overwhelmed by the sick, and Japan.
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Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-43981063239959884572015-09-10T18:38:00.000+10:002015-09-10T18:38:05.154+10:00Authors' Mistakes #31 - Lee Child
After longer than one year of silence, it is about time that I
resume writing in my blog. I know, blogs are out of fashion,
but who gives a damn?<br />
<br />
I like how Lee Child writes, and I usually find in his books
nothing worse than a couple of typos. But in the book I
am currently reading, <i>Personal</i>, he made a bad mistake.
So bad that I cannot remain quiet about it! In fact, I have to
write about it at once, even if I have only read less than a quarter of
the novel.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyD1V65vYJk7hahbuQfe65ll7OcsYjH0Cqlq77el6ZlWbLin2YLpJyHzLtUQtrHSqPidxooziecsk092_7HI3j0aTB7N30xzlbNZoEOhLC9t9Zz20CWNNnywVNJ5dBH6FGs7GPfo0r0gF/s1600/2015-09-10+Authors%2527+Mistakes+%252331+-+Lee+Child.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyD1V65vYJk7hahbuQfe65ll7OcsYjH0Cqlq77el6ZlWbLin2YLpJyHzLtUQtrHSqPidxooziecsk092_7HI3j0aTB7N30xzlbNZoEOhLC9t9Zz20CWNNnywVNJ5dBH6FGs7GPfo0r0gF/s400/2015-09-10+Authors%2527+Mistakes+%252331+-+Lee+Child.png" width="257" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
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<br />
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</div>
On page 61 (of my Australian edition, ISBN 978-0-593-07383-4), he writes that kicking down a door was<br />
<blockquote>
A question of force, obviously, which is the product of mass times velocity square, and that <i>squared</i> [his Italics] part puts a premium on speed, not weight.<br />
</blockquote>
Now, forces are measured in Newtons (<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">N</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">=kg*m</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">/s<sup>2</sup></span>). The formula <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><big>½</big> M V<sup>2</sup></span> refers to the kinetic energy of a moving body and is measured in Joules (<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">J</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">=kg*m</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><sup><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">2</span></sup>/s<sup>2</sup></span>, or <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">J=N*m</span>). They are different things.<br />
<br />
He then goes on with the following explanation:<br />
<blockquote>
Bulking up by twenty pounds at the gym is good, because it
throws an extra twenty pounds in the mix, but moving your foot 20 per
cent faster is better. It does you 400 per cent of a favour. Because
it gets squared. Which means multiplied by himself. Money for nothing.<br />
</blockquote>
How painful! I don't remember how heavy Jack Reacher is, but twenty
pounds will be about 10% of his weight. The kinetic energy of a body
10% heavier is 10% higher. If, on the other hand, the body moves 20%
faster, its kinetic energy increases by 44% (because the energy at the
higher speed is 1.2<sup>2</sup> = 1.44 times the original energy). Did
Child obtain his 400% by dividing 44% by 10%? I don't know. But one
thing is clear: the whole paragraph is muddled. And all those full
stops don't make it clearer. And why should your weight be relevant
when you kick a door with your foot?<br />
<br />
Kicking doors...<br />
<br />
The door and the door jamb have a certain elasticity, and you have to
apply enough force to them in order to exceed the limit of what they can
take. If you remain well below the limit, the door flexes by an amount
proportional to the force you apply (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_law">Hooke's law</a>)
and it returns to its original condition when you stop pushing.
Admittedly, a door is not as flexible as, say, a stick. But the
principle is the same: if you were strong enough, you wouldn't need to
kick a door in order to knock it down. You could just push with
increasing pressure until it breaks.<br />
<br />
When you kick a door, your foot almost completely comes to a stop,
thereby losing its kinetic energy. The sole of your shoe and your foot
and leg compress (similarly to when
you squeeze a rubber ball) and the door and door jamb flex (like when
you bend a stick). But if you hit with more and more energy (and
assuming that you don't break your foot), the elasticity of the door
cannot absorb it, and an increasing portion of that energy goes into
deforming and, ultimately, breaking the door.<br />
<br />
If you divide the kinetic energy of your foot by how much the door can
bend, you have a rough estimate of the force that you apply to the door
when you kick it. So, all in all, as the flexibility of the door is
what it is and the mass of your foot also doesn't change, it is true
that the only thing you have an influence on when you want to kick down a
door is the speed of your kick. But Child's explanation is still
muddled because he confuses energy and force and states that the weight
of the whole body is relevant.<br />
<br />
Child also made an impossible assertion on page 93:<br />
<blockquote>
the table was loaded with a long line of twelve laptop
computers. All of them were open to the exact same angle, and all the
screens were showing the exact same things, which were animated <i>Police nationale</i> screensavers, moving slowly but purposefully around the screens, all in lock step<br />
</blockquote>
Wow! how do you synchronise the screen savers of twelve computers and
keep them in sync? Assuming that the computers would sync their time
via the network (which is a standard practice), the moving pattern would
have to start at given times, rather than just keep going. And why
would anybody want to do it anyway (except for impressing Reacher, that
is)? What a concept...<br />
<br />
<br />
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child:
Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes:
Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman:
Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger
Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton
& Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child:
The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall:
Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow
Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green:
The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack:
Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford:
Apocalypse</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva:
The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy:
Locked On</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David:
After Earth</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston:
Impact</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian:
The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci:
Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI
Miami</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L.
Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami
#2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack
Greene
& Alessandro Massignani</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-28-peter-james.html">Peter
James</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-29-pwarren-mstreeter.html">P.Warren
& M.Streeter</a><br />
<a href="http://blog.zambon.com.au/2014/07/authors-mistakes-30-nigel-cawthorne.html">Nigel Cawthorne</a><br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-82845178712094268332014-08-17T15:14:00.001+10:002014-10-16T00:17:29.747+11:00The book lives onWhen I finally bought an iPad, I was looking forward to reading a
lot of books that were no longer in print. I warmed at the
idea that one day I could take with me all the books I had ever
read.<br />
<br />
But then I discovered that the iPad was too heavy for comfort when
reading in bed, where I do a non-negligible part of my
reading. And holding it by the edge meant that sometimes I
would unintentionally flip a page. Furthermore, sometimes I
wanted to reflect on what I had just read or re-read a paragraph,
and that resulted in a dimming of the display. As Captain
Picard said in the Star Trek episode <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday%27s_Enterprise"><i>Yesterday's
Enterprise</i></a> (one of my favourite), <i>Not good enough,
dammit, not good enough!<br />
<br />
</i> And yet, as Sherman Young convincingly affirms in his book <a href="http://shermanfyoung.wordpress.com/about/"><i>The book is
dead</i></a>, the only way for the book to survive is if book
lovers embrace eBooks.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4SocVdo3C68Hbv6DNokZRjBuSrqMHBvqbBLhKBkOGUDvf_kkol4OTmrf5l0OyGZsCZnwdED1rR5Tyg_0oKhXDeMaVECsORM0z25dv3AjAQJk25GtYo_FGssZpW-qkRka_dHN6a2VXpg8r/s1600/2014-08-17+The+book+lives+on+0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4SocVdo3C68Hbv6DNokZRjBuSrqMHBvqbBLhKBkOGUDvf_kkol4OTmrf5l0OyGZsCZnwdED1rR5Tyg_0oKhXDeMaVECsORM0z25dv3AjAQJk25GtYo_FGssZpW-qkRka_dHN6a2VXpg8r/s1600/2014-08-17+The+book+lives+on+0.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Young's book was published in 2007, three years before the iPad
became available (2010-04-03 in the USA). Therefore, Young's
vision of a <i>heavenly library</i> was still an act of faith. He
wrote (p 151/152, his Italics):<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px; text-align: justify;">
We can imagine the <i>heavenly library</i> as the world's
collection of books available in an instant. It will be
searchable, downloadable, readable with recommendations and
suggestions from other readers, authors and critics; and a place
to contribute to discussions about the book in question. Imagine
that it will allow access to titles that might not be feasible in
print (one in which <i>all</i> the <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=442">Vogel</a>
[my linking] shortlisters are published, not just the winner);
where the new Patrick Whites get to hang out their talent for as
many books as is required to find their voice. Imagine a catalogue
of niches, made possible and searchable via electronic delivery;
enabling a different set of publishing economics and priorities.</div>
<br />
Does it sound familiar? We are definitely getting there.
No more trees felled; no more money spent on printing books and
shipping them around the world; no more books out of print; no more
well-written books full of ideas that remain unpublished because
they are systematically rejected<i>.</i><br />
<br />
Sherman points out that the term <i>book</i> has come to identify
both a physical object consisting of bound printed pages and its
conceptual content of information and ideas. In his opinion,
and I agree with him, we should distinguish between the two
meanings.<br />
<br />
There are many objects like telephone books, dictionaries,
cookbooks, travel books, puzzle books, etc. that, although they
consist of bounded printed pages, do not communicate any ideas, do
not make the readers reflect on what they are reading, and do not
contribute to a <i>book culture</i> that involves exchanging
opinions and experiences with others. Such objects effectively
are <i>non-books</i>.<br />
<br />
Other borderline <i>non-books</i> are most of those written by
celebrities, regardless of whether they are performers (actors,
sportspeople, politicians, etc.) or individuals who gained fame or
notoriety by executing some news-making acts, like circumnavigating
the world solo or killing somebody.<br />
<br />
From a practical point of view, what the non-books have in common is
that they are designed to make quick money for the publishers.
Publishers used to invest in promising authors and then nurture them
to success, but today's big publishers (and most of the small
publishers as well) are an industry like any other. It doesn't
make any difference to them that they are selling books instead of
vacuum cleaners. What counts is that they can show good
quarterly figures. In a sense, we cannot even blame them,
because the whole society is fixed on making a quick buck.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the Internet and electronic publishing give us a new
way of sustaining a book culture (and culture in general).
Those with ideas can express them and communicate them to
like-minded people living anywhere in the world.<br />
<br />
According to Chris Anderson (<i>The Long Tail</i>, p 127), "the
future of business is selling less of more". What he means in
practical terms is that businesses can make more money by selling
few instances of many items than by selling lots of instances of few
items. In his book, published in 2006, Anderson concentrated
on the music industry, but what he wrote applies to eBooks as well.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUvx_-7EvkYbJgVnR7LSTObHzeUE5enYXwuXAjYZuTgLl1VzvHSd5TMjAkiGT_czZFBcfRjqJdZCd_E0b-UNbGGWp-zUac-Y-UmZdf9pbZ1RCMZJBaK2rp45MGRVdbp8e6jux0U_c9GV9l/s1600/2014-08-17+The+book+lives+on+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUvx_-7EvkYbJgVnR7LSTObHzeUE5enYXwuXAjYZuTgLl1VzvHSd5TMjAkiGT_czZFBcfRjqJdZCd_E0b-UNbGGWp-zUac-Y-UmZdf9pbZ1RCMZJBaK2rp45MGRVdbp8e6jux0U_c9GV9l/s1600/2014-08-17+The+book+lives+on+1.png" height="400" width="265" /></a></div>
<br />
To understand how this works, consider this: if 10 titles sell in
one year 1,000,000 copies, they result in the sale of 10 million
books; if, at the same time, 1,000,000 titles sell 50 copies each,
they result in the sale of five time as many books as the
blockbusters (these figures, which I have adapted from those
reported by Anderson, are not far from the real figures for
2004). According to the Wikipedia page on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tail">the long tail</a>,
"a large proportion of Amazon.com's book sales come from obscure
books that [are] not available from brick-and-mortar stores".<br />
<br />
What this means is that your ideas can reach their audience.
Social media and web sites like <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/">goodreads.com</a>
make possible a digital version of the book culture that used to
revolve around printed books.<br />
<br />
I just have to get used to reading eBooks. Perhaps the
mini-iPad or the iPad-air will be good enough. For now, I have
a paper-white Kindle and will try to get along with it!Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-67808597383046240112014-08-17T10:03:00.002+10:002014-08-17T10:03:27.647+10:00How to avoid accumulating unread books
I only buy books that I am pretty confident I will read (it wasn't
always like that!), but I have still been buying more books than I
can read. For example, last year, I read 57 books but bought
69. As a result, the shelf I reserve for books I haven't yet
read contains 62 books of non-fiction and 16 of fiction.<br />
<br />
A couple of months ago, I instituted a new rule: I only allow myself
to buy one book after reading two of the books I already have.
This means that I should drain my backlog of books in approximately
two and a half years, after reading (62 + 16) x 1.5 = 117 books.<br />
<br />
But I can always decide that I am not going to read some of the
books I already have... ;-)<br />
<br />
The article on
<a href="http://shermanfyoung.wordpress.com/about/"><i>The book is
dead</i></a>, by Sherman Young, will be next.<br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-22360860268668134062014-08-16T16:34:00.001+10:002014-08-16T16:36:36.990+10:00I am a book loverI started this article with the idea of writing of a book I had just
read, but got lost in reminescences. I found covers of books I
read more than 50 (yes, 50!) years ago and got sidetracked.
Very few, if any, could possibly be interested in my book-reading
experiences. But then, who cares? I don't want to throw
away this article simple because I am not a celebrity! After
all, with so much new stuff appearning on the Web every minute, most
pages are never read or even accessed. I'm very happy if
somebody reads what I write and finds it either useful or amusing,
but, ultimately, I write mainly for myself, because I have the need
or simply the pleasure of expressing myself. The article about
the book I originally wanted to write about will come later.<br />
<br />
Since when I was a child, not even a teen-ager, one of my favourite
pastimes has been reading. I started with adventure novels by
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilio_Salgari">Emilio Salgari</a>.
After that, I read books like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_the_Mohicans"><i>The
Last of Mohicans</i></a>, by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fenimore_Cooper">James
Fenimore Cooper</a>, the <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan">Tarzan</a></i> books
by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Rice_Burroughs">Edgard
Rice Burroughs</a>, and also the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling">Ruyard Kipling</a>'s
books. Or perhaps I should say "L'ultimo dei mohicani" and
"Tarzan delle scimmie", because I only understood Italian then.<br />
<br />
I remember buying books published by Viglongo and Marzocco.
They were large-format books, sometimes quite thick. My mother
would come with me to the bookshop and chat with the salespersons
while I choose the next book to read. Sometimes, it took me
the best part of half an hour because I couldn't decide what I
wanted to read next. Each book would cost 500 Italian Lire,
which, at the time (we are talking about the late 1950s or perhaps
the first 1960s), were worth less than one American Dollar.<br />
<br />
When I was in bed with parotitis, my mother read out to me <i><a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_citt%C3%A0_del_re_lebbroso">La
città del re lebbroso</a></i> (256 pages, published by Viglongo
in 1956, available <a href="http://www.liberliber.it/mediateca/libri/s/salgari/la_citta_del_re_lebbroso/pdf/la_cit_p.pdf">online</a>),
and she loved it too.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE1aOeEoky4mII48k3HEtdCI-ObUe-rgZ59yUq8teNKlX2pfwyKubfHZ7QH9lgXg0gdDhaAUXIq6feltytU5zEm_rsgoX5ikDLYz61-s6QRSaQMpLOl_cXQ3Sy3vmncLFNOvLZPCTRpogc/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+0+-+La+citta%60+del+re+lebbroso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE1aOeEoky4mII48k3HEtdCI-ObUe-rgZ59yUq8teNKlX2pfwyKubfHZ7QH9lgXg0gdDhaAUXIq6feltytU5zEm_rsgoX5ikDLYz61-s6QRSaQMpLOl_cXQ3Sy3vmncLFNOvLZPCTRpogc/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+0+-+La+citta%60+del+re+lebbroso.jpg" height="400" width="280" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
<br /></div>
Then, I discovered Science Fiction. The first book I read was
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_Deputy"><i>Death's
Deputy</i></a>, By Ron Hubbard, published by Mondadori in 1954
as No. 37 of their SF series <a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_romanzi_di_Urania"><i>I
Romanzi di Urania</i></a>. I didn't know then that most
translations were also arbitrarily shortened to fit into the
standard length of the series! A shame, really.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div align="center">
<br /></div>
A bit later, I discovered the crime novels. In the early
1960s, the most widely known series of crime novels was <i>I Gialli
Mondadori</i>, published by "Arnoldo Mondadori Editore" (founded
in 1907 and bought by Berlusconi in 1991). "Giallo" in Italian
means "yellow" and, indeed, the book covers were all yellow.
In fact, they were (perhaps, still are) so popular, that in Italy
all crime novels are simply called "libri gialli", regardless of who
publishes them! Here is the cover of the very first "Giallo",
published from 1929 to 1941:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnBbJyhA9SY2OFHO4ZBiYaxAa2O7P8dw8Q2SYV_cIQo0Me5WjNJAnI0teeC6FPkajiEX2u77oGska2T9S7zeD0y7w4ag6vJHBJzY8XynhJsWBVc1UM6i1mr_peLfktpBWwJtqjJDi5mlRi/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+2+-+giallo+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnBbJyhA9SY2OFHO4ZBiYaxAa2O7P8dw8Q2SYV_cIQo0Me5WjNJAnI0teeC6FPkajiEX2u77oGska2T9S7zeD0y7w4ag6vJHBJzY8XynhJsWBVc1UM6i1mr_peLfktpBWwJtqjJDi5mlRi/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+2+-+giallo+1.jpg" height="400" width="270" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
<br /></div>
After the war, in 1946, Mondadory restarted the series with Erle
Stanly Gardner's <i>The Case of The Silent Partner</i> (sorry I
couldn't find a better image):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXTb14SPMNzExtdq3eW0DW6NFRJ_ierYlCEzExeCRM7-OmpyQU_arcI1jtwFJWMASA7WYOfsJzWV4lR60ALasXb_NdNjK1_1-OX0GCVqR80RiKriZ2RVrW_pMesswSTf6_dCgT2JvQv2j7/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+3+-+Perry+Mason+1946.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXTb14SPMNzExtdq3eW0DW6NFRJ_ierYlCEzExeCRM7-OmpyQU_arcI1jtwFJWMASA7WYOfsJzWV4lR60ALasXb_NdNjK1_1-OX0GCVqR80RiKriZ2RVrW_pMesswSTf6_dCgT2JvQv2j7/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+3+-+Perry+Mason+1946.jpg" height="320" width="236" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
</div>
<br />
In the early 1960s, when I discovered Perry Mason, I bought all the
novels I could find (eleven, I believe). In one week, I read
ten of them. That got me saturated and never touched a Perry
Mason novel again till very recently, when I read (obviously in
English this time) two of them re-published by Penguin.<br />
<br />
In 1963, I started attending high-school and kept reading all sorts
of things. Unfortunately, one day, my mother decided that I
wouldn't re-read my adventure books and donated them all to a
charity. I would love to page through them again, but the past
is the past.<br />
<br />
Years later (in 1978), when I moved to Germany, I left all my stuff
with my mother. Unfortunately, her cellar was very humid and,
one day, she indiscriminately tossed away everything I had left to
remind me of my youth: books, magazines, pictures, small cameras,
memorabilia, and even my school certificates. If I had been
there, I would have tried to salvage something, but I was 1,300km
away. What a loss!<br />
<br />
It is true what the Buddhists say: attachment causes
suffering. The more you have, the more you are afraid of
losing your possessions. Eventually, everything will go.
The more you are aware of it, the less you will suffer.<br />
<br />
And yet, I am very attached to my books. Sometimes, I think I
should give them all away and be free of that attachment, but I
don't think I will ever really do it. Actually, once, I almost
did it. I think it was in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
I decided I had to give up my possessions, including my books, to
detach myself from "having" and fully embrace "being". But I
couldn't separate myself from three books: <i>La venticinquesima
ora</i>, by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu, <i>Siddharta</i>, by
Hermann Hesse, and <i>La dottrina del Tao</i>, by Alberto
Castellani. Well, to be entirely correct, I also kept some
reference books like a sky atlas and some textbooks. But you
get the idea.<br />
<br />
I currently own 1,142 printed books, 143 of which are stored in
cartons that fill the bottom level of a couple of wardrobes. I
have several bookshelves in my study, but a non-negligible part of
the available space is taken up by DVDs, CDs, and various stacks of
papers.<br />
<br />
Now, you might wonder how I can possibly know the exact number of
books I have...<br />
<br />
I know it because I keep a spreadsheet with the full list of
them. Each item includes the following information:<br />
<ul>
<li>Category (e.g., Hist);</li>
<li>Identification code (e.g., ha.01);<br />
</li>
<li>Last time read (e.g., 2002_04);</li>
<li>Language (e.g., E);</li>
<li>Title (e.g., The Custom of the Sea);</li>
<li>Author[s] (e.g., Neil Hanson);</li>
<li>Number of pages (e.g., 458);</li>
<li>Format (e.g., p);</li>
<li>Location (e.g., b).<br />
</li>
</ul>
In the example, <i>The Custom of the Sea</i>, by Neil Hanson, is a
paperback of 458 pages, written in English; I classified it as
Hist-ha.01; it was the fourth book I read in 2002, and is to be
found in the "big" bookcase.<br />
<br />
Yes. You got it: I keep a list of all the books I read.
Each reading entry also includes the start and end dates and the
number of pages I actually read (because sometimes I don't read them
from cover to cover). Unfortunately, I only started in 1991.<br />
<br />
After studying the various classification methods used in libraries,
I decided to develop my own. The problem was that I didn't
want to have to learn decimal classification (like in the Dewey
system) or arbitrary letters (like in the Library of Congress
system). That is, I wanted to group the books in a way that
would tell me what the book was about. Here it is:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXbTK7Db9XVibQ9fdR4KwAfrFJC0yYcFjBEcE9S1z9S7bsPWsX1yF5wgQrXppcN9VRnBMD6z6VFnXSPzXfAYtANogewcCK6PT_tagbygJhMYHN3ALyLCLSUbi5Uesu1qEER65aCWe1omev/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+4+-+classification.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXbTK7Db9XVibQ9fdR4KwAfrFJC0yYcFjBEcE9S1z9S7bsPWsX1yF5wgQrXppcN9VRnBMD6z6VFnXSPzXfAYtANogewcCK6PT_tagbygJhMYHN3ALyLCLSUbi5Uesu1qEER65aCWe1omev/s1600/2014-08-16+I+am+a+book+lover+4+-+classification.png" height="290" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I initially placed the books in the proper order, but things got
messy over the past couple of years. I will have to put them
back in order and then, perhaps, identify the books I should give
away.<br />
<br />
I also keep the list of books I read but no longer have, either
because I gave them away or because I had borrowed them from
libraries or friends.<br />
<br />
And then (obviously!), I make all sorts of statistics. For
example, I know for each year since 1991 how many pages I read of
books in each category. It turns out that between 1991 and
2013, I read 45 books/year and 39 pages/day, but the averages
are increasing: in the ten years from 2004 to 2013, I read 49
books/year and 47 pages/day.<br />
<br />
Now, eBooks in EPUB format are making my statistics more difficult
to keep because their text "flows". But I can still estimate a
number of virtual pages by counting the words in an eBook page,
multiplying it by the number of pages in the eBook, and dividing the
result by 250...<br />
<br />
In any case, although I bought an iPad and a Kindle, I don't really
enjoy reading books in digital format. I love the physicality
of printed books. In other words, although I recognise that
the real value of books is in their content, I also love books as
objects.<br />
<br />
But enough for now. I will write on the subject of printed
books vs. digital books in my next article, when I will talk about <a href="http://shermanfyoung.wordpress.com/about/"><i>The book is
dead</i></a>, by Sherman Young.Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-49824798950176257452014-08-03T16:48:00.002+10:002014-08-03T16:48:43.715+10:00Jihad and Kamikazes
Paul Ham, in his book <i>Hiroshima Nagasaki</i>, reports that in
1945 the Japanese tried hard to recruit 15-year-old boys as Kamikaze
pilots.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSu7-Ufwl-u732tbKRUKnirgNSVXxQb25xfYAv9YkHBsfYUW0GPqPB1aQOG-QwjYS4roNRH3zeKSb946u7nyXlvZy2W8csFKvgJ2gSf8fUGpJDidX_f3yg2SqRpNU1UicBMfq6c7gZid8/s1600/2014-08-03+Jihad+and+Kamikaze.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMSu7-Ufwl-u732tbKRUKnirgNSVXxQb25xfYAv9YkHBsfYUW0GPqPB1aQOG-QwjYS4roNRH3zeKSb946u7nyXlvZy2W8csFKvgJ2gSf8fUGpJDidX_f3yg2SqRpNU1UicBMfq6c7gZid8/s1600/2014-08-03+Jihad+and+Kamikaze.png" height="400" width="246" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
</div>
<br />
He writes:<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px; text-align: justify;">
In Hiroshima, Nagasaki and elsewhere, advertisements for ‘child
soldiers’ appeared in the newspapers, encouraging parents to
enlist their sons. Posters exhorted children to worship and
imitate the death squads and kamikazes. Captions such as, ‘Mother!
Father! Send me into the skies too!’ accompanied dreamy pictures
of boys gazing into US ships. The Intelligence and Aviation
Bureaus and the Great Japan Aeronautic Association were
responsible for these desperate appeals.<br />
</div>
<br />
As I keep saying in my articles, desperation is what drives terrorism.
Let's give hope to those suicide bombers and they will stop blowing themselves up.<br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-68838466867197878392014-07-31T22:01:00.001+10:002014-08-01T13:59:05.622+10:00Enough is Enough!For how long are our governments going to put up with Israel's annihilation of Gaza?<br />
<br />
The Israeli Army has hit UN refugee camps, schools, and hospitals, but
the governments of Australia, the USA, and who knows how many other
countries don't make a pip.<br />
<br />
For how long political alliances and lobbying-driven expediency are going to justify our leaders' acquiescence?<br />
<br />
Gaza has been blockaded since 2007. This is inhumane and it should
stop. But now the situation has deteriorated past beyond that. More
than 1300 Palestinians have been killed, against 60 Israeli. Every
death is a tragedy. Every death deprives a family of a loved one. But
most of the 60 or so Israeli deaths are of soldiers who entered Gaza to
bring destruction, while the majority of the Palestinian deads are
civilians, including hundreds of children. Those with bloodied hands are Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.<br />
<br />
How can anybody call such a massacre of innocent lives an assertion of
Israel's right of self-defence? Hamas should stop firing rockets into
Israel. There is no doubt about that. But even if Hamas's deadly game
were a disingenuous attempt to stoke the conflict in order to score
political and diplomatic sympathies, it couldn't possibly justify
Israel's response.<br />
<br />
Gaza is one of the most densely populated regions on Earth, and now
Israel has declared a No-Go zone covering 30% of the whole territory.
Additionally, Israel has destroyed the only power plant in Gaza, causing
a permanent black-out in 80% of the strip. Without electricity, the
fridges don't work, and most Palestinians are then forced to go out to
buy food every day, further endangering their lives in the process.<br />
<br />
Self-preservation justifies a lot, but I am sure that many Israelis will be as horrified as I am at what is happening in Gaza.<br />
<br />
During the second half of 1978, I was in Israel twice, for a total
period of about two months. During my first trip there, I was for a
month in Degania Aleph, the first Kibbutz established in Israel, were I
met the young lady who was to become my wife. I have very fond memories
of my staying in Israel and the last thing you could say about me is
that I am an anti-Semite.<br />
<br />
The resentment that is growing inside me is therefore not centred on the
Jewish people, but on the criminal policies of the Israeli government.
I am a pacifist and don't condone violence, especially when applied to
the weak and the disadvantaged.<br />
<br />
Obviously, I don't only condemn the actions of Netanyahu's government,
but also Hamas strategy of confrontation and, most of all, the suicide
bombings that have become an almost-daily occurrence in the Middle-East.<br />
<br />
But although I don't excuse the recourse to terrorism, I do understand
it. Perhaps more people should try to go beyong their one-way mindset
and attempt to perceive the world from the point of view of suicide
bombers. Those young Muslims feel like cornered animals, and lash out
in desperation. The opulence of the Western world is for everyone to
see on the TV screens, as is its moral decadence and its Hedonism,
accompanied by hypocritical statements of values and virtues that have
long be supplanted by greed and selfishness. Of course an increasing
number of young Palestinian (and Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi, ...)
are attracted to those who speak of honour, purity, and a sacred
mission to rid the world of the sinners. How can they resist that
message, as misdirected and instrumentalised as it is?<br />
<br />
We who live in rich western democracies should do our best to educate
these youg people, give them hope, treat them with respect and
compassion, not simply try to switch them off. And we should, first of
all, start work at home by electing full human beings to govern us,
rather than puppets of multinationals or robots only capable of uttering
slogans.<br />
<br />
I am sick and tired of listening to politicians who never answer a
question, who only follow the party lines, who treat human beings as if
they were inanimate objects, and who don't listen to anyone when they
are in government only to oppose everything when they are in
opposition. How I would love to be able to look at our elected
representatives and feel proud of my country!<br />
<br />
But I am digressing...Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-23863367627600198552014-07-30T21:21:00.000+10:002014-08-12T16:18:26.488+10:00The struggle of making an EPUB on the MacEPUB (Electronic PUBlication) is an e-book standard by the
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Most significantly,
Apple and an increasing number of vendors have adopted it for their
e-readers.<br />
<br />
The latest version of the standard is <a href="http://idpf.org/epub">3.01</a>, but be warned: it is not easy to understand.<br />
<br />
In essence, an EPUB consists of web pages plus some files that tell the e-reader how the pages are organised:<br />
<ul>
<li>The file named <tt>mimetype</tt> contains the string <tt>application/epub+zip</tt>.</li>
<li>The folder named <tt>META-INF</tt> contains the XML file <tt>container.inf</tt> with additional general info.</li>
<li>XHTML
(i.e., HTML conforming to the XML standard) documents contain all the
text, with links to images and media objects.</li>
<li>A file with extension <tt>opf</tt> (which stands for Open Packaging Format) defines how the various documents fit together.</li>
<li>An XHTML document defines how the user can navigates through the e-book.</li>
</ul>
Once you have all your files in place, you zip them together, change the extension from <tt>zip</tt> to <tt>epub</tt>, and read them as an e-book on your iPad. The IDPF provides a <a href="http://validator.idpf.org/">validator</a> that lets you check your document. If you have done everything right, you are rewarded with the following message:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQRPwQsDzQW5GfA8PTn1GtyoP8pphZfpBh68JF0rqneTEjm-E341ClFqrOxQrmpZm-Ag0wTZ9SV4gW57xqz2Noo1cu8pjftpEdihFfnchH-s_2pieajKUgzO8rnjR4GmXgPM6S2QhCIX_X/s1600/2014-07-30+The+struggle+of+making+an+EPUB+on+the+Mac+0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQRPwQsDzQW5GfA8PTn1GtyoP8pphZfpBh68JF0rqneTEjm-E341ClFqrOxQrmpZm-Ag0wTZ9SV4gW57xqz2Noo1cu8pjftpEdihFfnchH-s_2pieajKUgzO8rnjR4GmXgPM6S2QhCIX_X/s1600/2014-07-30+The+struggle+of+making+an+EPUB+on+the+Mac+0.png" height="237" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
My <tt>test.epub</tt> was a trivial e-book, but it literally took me hours before I could work out how to put it together on the Mac.<br />
<br />
To zip a folder on the Mac is easy: all you need to do is select the
folder and then click on the "Compress" entry of the "File menu". But
if you do so, the folder itself will be zipped and you don't want that.
You want a single zip file with the content of the folder, without the
folder itself. In my case, I had a folder called <tt>test</tt> containing the file <tt>mimetype</tt>, the folder <tt>META-INF</tt>, and the folder <tt>EPUB</tt> with the rest (you can name most of the files as you like).<br />
<br />
The Mac OS is Unix-based. As such, it includes the almost universally present <tt>zip</tt> command. But it took me a while to make my <tt>test.zip</tt> (then renamed <tt>test.epub</tt>) that would pass IDPF's validator. After attaching to the <tt>test</tt> folder where all the e-book files were, I typed the following commands:<br />
<tt><br />
Giulios-Mac:test giulio$ <b>zip test -X -0 mimetype</b></tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: mimetype (stored 0%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt>This first command created the file <tt>test.zip</tt> containing <tt>mimetype</tt> and nothing else. The <tt>-X</tt> option ensures that no attributes are added to the file and <tt>-0</tt> that the file remains uncompressed. In this way, you satisfy the EPUB standard that <tt>mimetype</tt>
be the first file in the package, naked, and uncompressed. If you zip
everything at the same time or without the options, the validator will
fail.<br />
<br />
<tt>Giulios-Mac:test giulio$ <b>zip -r test * -u -n zip</b></tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/ (stored 0%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/.DS_Store (deflated 95%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/main.html (deflated 79%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/nav.html (deflated 39%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/package.opf (deflated 51%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/util/ (stored 0%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: EPUB/util/ebook.css (deflated 71%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: META-INF/ (stored 0%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt> adding: META-INF/container.xml (deflated 34%)</tt><tt><br />
</tt>This second command adds to <tt>test.zip</tt> the rest of the e-book (identified by the asterisk). The <tt>-u</tt> option specifies that it is an update, and <tt>-n zip</tt> excludes from the compression the files with extension <tt>zip</tt> (necessary because <tt>test.zip</tt> is inside <tt>test/</tt>).<br />
<br />
As you can see, my e-book only included one XHTML document (<tt>main.html</tt>) and a style sheet (<tt>ebook.css</tt>),
with no images. I have named my XHTML files with the extension HTML
because I found it easier to work with and extensions don't matter.
Also notice that the folder <tt>EPUB/</tt> contains a file named <tt>.DS_Store</tt>.
Mac OS freely sprinkles these files all over the place to store folder
properties. They are a hidden nuisance that causes problems whenever
you access Mac folders outside the Mac universe. But you can remove them with the following command:<br />
<br />
<tt>Giulios-Mac:test giulio$ <b>find . -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec zip test -d {} \;</b></tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>deleting: EPUB/.DS_Store</tt><tt><br />
</tt>It searches the current folder and all subfolders for files named <tt>.DS_Store</tt>. Whenever it finds one, it passes its location on to the zip command that removes it from <tt>test.zip</tt>.<br />
<br />
Finally, the following command showed that all <tt>.DS_Store</tt> files had been removed:<br />
<br />
<tt>Giulios-Mac:test giulio$ <b>zipinfo test.zip</b></tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>Archive: test.zip 3176 bytes 9 files</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>-rwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 20 b- stor 30-Jul-14 11:29 mimetype</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>drwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 0 bx stor 30-Jul-14 16:47 EPUB/</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>-rwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 1694 tx defN 30-Jul-14 15:03 EPUB/main.html</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>-rwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 461 tx defN 30-Jul-14 15:05 EPUB/nav.html</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>-rwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 836 tx defN 30-Jul-14 16:03 EPUB/package.opf</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>drwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 0 bx stor 30-Jul-14 14:02 EPUB/util/</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>-rwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 1996 tx defN 30-Jul-14 15:57 EPUB/util/ebook.css</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>drwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 0 bx stor 30-Jul-14 11:29 META-INF/</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>-rwxr-xr-x 3.0 unx 259 tx defN 30-Jul-14 14:54 META-INF/container.xml</tt><tt><br />
</tt><tt>9 files, 5266 bytes uncompressed, 1822 bytes compressed: 65.4%</tt><tt><br />
</tt><br />
I tried to remove the bloody <tt>.DS_Store</tt> files before zipping,
but without success. I resorted to removing them from the zip file out
of desperation, but it works just fine.Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-22582811406485612342014-07-28T23:39:00.003+10:002014-07-28T23:39:36.117+10:00A World of Exibitionists and Voyeurs
On 2014-07-25, the Los Angeles Times reported "Google reportedly finalizes deal for live stream service Twitch".<br />
<br />
In case you don't know, Twitch Interactive offers live streaming of people playing video games.<br />
<br />
Google paid 1G$ (1 billion US dollars) to gain control of Twitch. It
sounds outragious to me, perhaps because I stopped playing wideogames
when PacMan and Pong were the rage of the time. But it makes sense:
Twitch has 45 million unique viewers per month (up from 3.2M since the
site was launched three years ago). "Twitchers" spend daily an average
of 106 minutes watching somebody else play video games, and 58% of them
do it for more than 20h a week. And when Google will merge Twitch into
YouTube, you can reasonably expect that more live activities will be
added.<br />
<br />
OK. I admit it: all the craze of the past decade to post selfies and
videos has never excited me. I don't have this urge to show myself to
the world. What motivates me to publish this blog is the hope (dare I
say <i>knowledge</i>?) that, among all the chaff I write, there is
something that people will find useful or at least entertaining. Buried
among the postings about how to fold toilet paper (<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/toilet-paper-woes.html">Toilet paper woes</a>) and those containing micro-fiction (e.g., <a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/being-toad.html">Being a Toad</a>),
there are more serious articles. My most-viewed top three (perhaps not
surprising, about programming) have so far collected 11,484 page views (<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/oo-uml-behavior-diagrams.html">OO - UML Behavior Diagrams</a>, <a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/oo-uml-structure-diagrams.html">OO - UML Structure Diagrams</a>, and <a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/fortran-and-eclipse-on-mac.html">Fortran and Eclipse on the Mac</a>).
Very far from the millions of hits of successful videos, but it still
gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling to think that I helped thousands of
people in a practical way.<br />
<br />
Humans are social animals. We have to give credit to people like Mark
Zuckerberg to have recognised it and to have been able to capitalise on
it. It is, in a sense, the logical evolution of the tabloid magazines.
A major difference though is that now everybody can feel a bit like a
celebrity, especially if [s]he agrees to bare body and soul to the
world!<br />
<br />
FaceBook, YouTube, Flicker, and the rest of the "social" web sites let
everyone give in to exibitionism and, at the receiving end, voyeurism. I
don't understand how people can spend hours reading and writing
gossip. I only like YouTube because it lets me see old TV programs in
B&W and performances of my favourite singers.<br />
<br />
The success of Twitch is just one more confirmation of this
exibitionism/voyeurism compact that drives the Internet (besides porn, of
course).<br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-43929653858885254212014-07-22T23:57:00.001+10:002014-07-22T23:57:19.052+10:00Authors' Mistakes #30 - Nigel Cawthorne
I just finished reading <i>The History of the Mafia, by </i>Nigel
Cawthorne. I found it quite interesting, although after a
while, the endless list of killings began to become
monotonous. There is no list of bibliographic references,
which means that the book cannot be really considered a reliable
source of historical information. But it is a good starting
point for learning about the Italian Mafia. Unfortunately, as it
systematically happens when a non-Italian writes about Italy, it
contains several mistakes. Actually, there is also a bad
mistake of English grammar...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJz1obj5Vd3kX84GcFuozUelN3pY5wVYubq3S_94p9Z35BjXVYXGGxZZiENqMRp4oQh5o0HqbmbzWMdWM-NwMi4inpiKKScgHrSIs_BUCdvL7f2e8RpTvV00_xS0WTXMEtI_Qs0kuEzW75/s1600/2014-07-22+Authors%27+Mistakes+%2330+-+Nigel+Cawthorne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJz1obj5Vd3kX84GcFuozUelN3pY5wVYubq3S_94p9Z35BjXVYXGGxZZiENqMRp4oQh5o0HqbmbzWMdWM-NwMi4inpiKKScgHrSIs_BUCdvL7f2e8RpTvV00_xS0WTXMEtI_Qs0kuEzW75/s1600/2014-07-22+Authors'+Mistakes+%2330+-+Nigel+Cawthorne.jpg" height="400" width="282" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
<div align="left">
<br />
</div>
</div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 100%px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><b>#</b><br />
</td>
<td valign="top"><b>Page</b><br />
</td>
<td valign="top"><b>Description</b><br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">1<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">6<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The Mafia code of silence, "omertà", is
spelled "omèrta".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">2<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">7<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The word "pentiti" means "repenting ones",
not "penitent ones".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">3<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">7<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Goodbye to the Mafia protection money" is
written as "addiopizzo", while it should have been written
as "addio pizzo", with two separate words.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">4<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">7<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Organisation" is spelled the Ameriacn way
("organization"), although in the same page you can read
"honour", which is a British/Australian spelling of what the
American would spell "honor". This is not a problem of
Italian (and it is not the English grammar problem I
mentioned above), but it is an annoying inconsistency.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">5<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">18<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Fontana Nuova" means "New Fountain", not
"New Source".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">6<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">22<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The plural of the Italian word "capo" (I.e.,
"chief") is written as "capos", while it should have been
"capi". The same mistake is repeated on page 200.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">7<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">27<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Somebody belonging to the Neapolitan
equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia is called "camorrista", not
"camorristo". It is the same with other words that end
with "sta". For example, "artista" is used in Italian
for both male and a female artists (but the undefined
article gives away the gender, as a male artist is "un
artista", while a female artist is "un'artista").<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">8<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">37<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Wrong spelling of a preposition: "di
Vigilanza" (which means "of Vigilance") is spelled "de
Vigilanza".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">9<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">37<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The Italian royal family was originally from
the Alpine French region of "Savoy", which is "Savoia" in
Italian, while "Sovoia" is not an Italian word.
Therefore, I cannot imagine that an Italian restaurant in
Manhattan in 1908 was called "La Sovoia".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">10<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">49<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">An error similar to #7: "another Brooklyn
camorristi" is wrong because "camorristi" is plural.
It should have been "camorrista".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">11<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">112<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Gaetono" should have been "Gaetano".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">12<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">122<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Raimondo" is the name of a man. It
should have been "Raimonda".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">13<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">126<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The Italian for "corps" is "corpo", not
"corpe".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">14<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">132<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Borgata" is not the Italian word for
"village" and it can mean "hamlet", not "slum". It can
indicate a group of houses along or near a main road or, in
Rome, a working-class suburb at the edge of the city.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">15<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">133<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Rebibbia is in Rome, not Palermo. </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">16<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">145<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Scarpa" does mean "shoe", but in Italian,
not in Sicilian dialect.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">17<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">148<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Corleonisi" should be "Corleonese".
The name of the Sicilian town is "Corleone", and the ending
in "i" is plural.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">18<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">149<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The murdered General of the Carabinieri was
"Dalla Chiesa", not "Chiesa". The same mistake is
repeated on page 150 and twice on page 180, but ion page 180
the name is also written twice correctly.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">19<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">149<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Cessation" should be "Cassation".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">20<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">170<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Here is the mistake in English grammar:
"After running his brother's campaign, John made Robert
attorney general". The subject of the main clause is
John ("John made..."), but it was Robert who ran his
brother's campaign. Something like "After Robert ran
his brother's campaign, John made him attorney general"
would have been correct.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">21<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">198<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The sentence "Chi l'ha visto?" should have
been translated as "Who ha seen him?", not "Who has seen
it?".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">22<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">201<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">There is no town named "Duisberg" in Germany. Its name is "Duisburg".<br />
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
When will authors who write about Italy and Italian ask a bilingual
editor to check their texts? I could do it (for a reasonable
fee!)<br />
<br />
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child:
Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes:
Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman:
Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger
Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton
& Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child:
The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall:
Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow
Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green:
The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack:
Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford:
Apocalypse</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva:
The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy:
Locked On</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David:
After Earth</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston:
Impact</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian:
The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci:
Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI
Miami</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L.
Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami
#2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack
Greene
& Alessandro Massignani</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-28-peter-james.html">Peter
James</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-29-pwarren-mstreeter.html">P.Warren
& M.Streeter</a><br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-19092523721666759572014-07-21T22:26:00.002+10:002014-07-21T22:26:35.244+10:00Legalise them all<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
For years I have been of the opinion that we should legalise all drugs,
light and heavy. I don't use any drug and only drink a little, perhaps a
beer a week. That wouldn't change if cannabis, narcotics, and
what-have-you became available legally. I just don't understand why the
state should prevent people from smoking or injecting what they want.
They do it anyway. If drugs were legally available, the cost, both in
terms of suffering and in terms of dollars, would be significatly
reduced. And the thefts, spreding of diseases, and violence that
surround the drug trade would disappear.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5IEftY55YTl6OXMS6ABU6H7QAezUB4r9__cuk9FaUn55pSKJ5bzvF8IBHNvUIoHDJdTOftEZC5BQ3My_Sn4PajlHMGgdAaZ_1hR6MnoNbxNCFAhlnkJ-YsnvTXlwWfN68zqND0VTZO08y/s1600/2014-07-21+Legalise+them+all.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5IEftY55YTl6OXMS6ABU6H7QAezUB4r9__cuk9FaUn55pSKJ5bzvF8IBHNvUIoHDJdTOftEZC5BQ3My_Sn4PajlHMGgdAaZ_1hR6MnoNbxNCFAhlnkJ-YsnvTXlwWfN68zqND0VTZO08y/s1600/2014-07-21+Legalise+them+all.jpg" height="320" width="294" /></a></div>
<br />
What the state should do is ensure that intoxicated people do not
endanger other people's lives. And they are failing on that, because
drunks cause many fatal car accidents and street fights. The issue is
not whether somebody is drunk or high on dope. The issue is whether
that person can sit behind a steering wheel or punch somebody on the
nose. In this sense, alcohol is far more dangerous than, say, heroine.
And yet, nobody (fortunately) is speaking of outlawing alcohol.<br />
<br />
Can you imagine how much money would be freed if we stopped preventing
people from buying drugs or growing marihuana plants in the backyard?
By legalising drugs, we would undermine most of the trafficking and the
associated criminality and would save the lives of those who now die for
overdose because they inject badly cut drugs. And the government could
tax drugs as they do now with alcholic beverages.<br />
<br />
Obviously, these considerations are not new, and I am sure that somebody
will find counter-arguments for any argument I can bring, but we only
need to look at history to know what we should do, because humans have
not significantly changed since recorded history. In fact, we only need
to go back less than one hundred years.<br />
<br />
I am reading the book <i>The History of the Mafia</i> by Nigel Cawthorne, and have just arrived to where he writes about Prohibition and Al Capone. This is how that chapter begins:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px; text-align: justify;">
When
the Volstead Act banning the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
beverages was passed in 1919, organized crime in America went
mainstream. [...] it is estimated that 75 per cent of the population of
the United States became client of bootleggers. It was big business.
There had been 16,000 saloons in New York before the Volstead Act. These
were replaced by 32,000 'speakeasies' (illegal drinking
establishments). Britain's alcohol export to Canada rose six-fold and it
was said that more intoxicating liquor was sent to Jamaica and Barbados
than the population could possibly drink in a hundred years. During
five years of Prohibition, 40 million gallons of wine and beer were
seized. In 1925 alone, 173,000 illegal stills were impounded. This did
nothing to stem the supply. And with the price of alcohol first doubling
and then climbing to ten times what it had been before Prohibition,
there was plenty of profit for the bootleggers.<br />
<br />
</div>
Can you imagine how much effort and money it took to discover and
seize millions of gallons of beverages and to close hundreds of
thousands of illegal stills?<br />
<br />
And it didn't really work. It only gave to organise crime a new market.<br />
<br />
Perhaps not many know that Prohibition, besides in the USA, was tried in
several countries (Russia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, to name the most
significant). And it didn't work there either. It only helped organised
crime.<br />
<br />
You know what? I am optimistic. I believe that in a decade or two, at
least in the western democracies, governments will realise that they
have been mistaken in banning drugs. Cannabis Sativa is a lovely leafy
plant and I would love to grow it in my garden.<br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-74561385318397281502014-06-22T22:57:00.000+10:002014-06-22T22:57:01.935+10:00Books: Writings on an Ethical Life, by Peter Singer
I just finished reading <i>Writings on an Ethical Life</i>, by
Peter Singer.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbTD6NwQsDDVVCk2tX5l9vbCOOEphFnLOb95OLV69y1Lqy6HILoPlgWrP-INN1Ho4arI_Li7Ze7gz-3f_IIQspnorNQy1MXEKZlvuMdy4cAfOxJAI3cYglgPlV2v3KRkfs7J7eTprjDVnm/s1600/2014-06-22+Books_Writings_on_an_Ethical_Life,+by+Peter+Singer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbTD6NwQsDDVVCk2tX5l9vbCOOEphFnLOb95OLV69y1Lqy6HILoPlgWrP-INN1Ho4arI_Li7Ze7gz-3f_IIQspnorNQy1MXEKZlvuMdy4cAfOxJAI3cYglgPlV2v3KRkfs7J7eTprjDVnm/s1600/2014-06-22+Books_Writings_on_an_Ethical_Life,+by+Peter+Singer.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a><br />
</div>
<div align="center">
<div align="left">
<br />
</div>
</div>
For those who don't know him, Peter Singer is a philosopher who
has become very controversial because some of his positions, which
he expressed without compromising clarity to political
correctness. This book is in my opinion a must-read for everybody who is concerned with moral and ethical issues.<br />
<br />
In an interview conducted by Bob Abernethy and shoved on WNET-TV
on 20 September 1999, he expressed very clearly the key concepts
that form the basis of his positions (a transcript of the interview
is included in the book). In response to the very first
question, he stated:<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px; text-align: justify;">
First, it is important to say that in my view [...] a <i>human
being</i> doesn't have value simply in virtue of belonging to
the species <i>Homo Sapiens</i>. Species membership alone
isn't enough. The qualities that I think are important are,
first, a capacity to experience something—that is, a capacity to
feel pain, or to have any kind of feelings. That's really
basic. But then that's something we share with a huge range
of nonhuman animals. In addition, when it comes to a
question of taking life, or allowing life to end, I would say it
matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that that
he or she actually has a life—that is, can see that he or she is
the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who
will exist in the future.<br />
I use the term "person"
to refer to a being with that kind of self-awareness—in the words
of the philosopher James Rachels, a being who can live a <i>biographical</i>
life and not merely a <i>biological</i> life. A person has
a lot more to lose when his or her life is ended than a being that
is conscious, and can feel pain, but nevertheless is conscious of
its existence only moment by moment, experiencing only one
moment of consciousness and then the next, without understanding
the connection between them.<br />
</div>
<br />
One of the results of his position is that in his opinion parents should
be able to choose to
kill their newborn child if it was born with conditions so severe that
doctors don't really try to keep it alive. In Singer's words, "It would
be justifiable to take active steps to end that infant's life swiftly
and more humanely than by allowing death to come through dehydration,
starvation, or an untreated infection".<br />
<br />
Clearly, such positions have generated a lot of controversy. But I have
to ask, once political correctness and absolute truths based on faith
rather than logic are left behind, how can anybody disagree with such a
statement? The sanctity of human life advocated by many (perhaps most)
is based on the concept that human beings are made in the image of God
and should be treated in a special way purely because they belong to the
species <i>Homo Sapiens</i>. But a baby, as a being, is no different
from other mammals. In fact, it can be argued that, given the choice
between saving an adult chimpanzee and a human baby with spina bifida,
we should save the chimpanzee. An adult chimpanzee has a past and looks
forward to a future life, why a human infant has no past and is not
self-aware.<br />
<br />
In general, I find that too often society reacts to ideas and events
because it is perceived that people have to react that way, rather than
because they have thought the whole matter through. This is not the
first time that I mention my hatred for political correctness (and empty
politeness, but that's another matter).<br />
<br />
Nowadays, you cannot disagree with some policies of the state of Israel
or condemn some acts of the Israeli army without being accused of
anti-semitism. Well, I believe that Israel has no moral right to keep
the people in Gaza captive and prevent ships from supplying them. Hamas
shouldn't send rockets to Israel. It is, in fact, an activity that I
found unacceptable and, frankly, also counterproductive. But the
Israeli government really are bullies. And I am <i>not</i> for this an anti-semite!<br />
<br />
You cannot observe that blacks and whites are different without being
accused of being racist. If you search the Internet, you will find that
for decades people have argued about differences of IQ between ethnic
groups. Somebody wrote that blacks (or Africans? I don't remember)
have on average a lower IQ than European and that Asians (or Chinese?)
have an average IQ <i>higher</i> than Europeans. And so what? First of
all, we are talking of measurements that are not as straightforward as
measuring heights of weights. With these IQ tests, the only thing that
you can be certain of is what the scores are. Certainly not what they
mean and what they exactly measure. Secondly, there are so many factors
that have an influence on the capacity to solve tests, ranging from
education to nutrition, from health to how much coffee you have drunk
before sitting for the test. Even if it were true that blacks have
lower average scores, very many blacks will still score better than most
Europeans and Chinese!<br />
<br />
And then, of course there is sexism. Human females have smaller brains
than males. That is a fact. Am I being sexist? Probably not, unless I
were than to say that women are therefore less intelligent (whatever
that means) than men. But I certainly don't believe so. And what if I
were to say that women are on average more emotional than men? Perhaps
such a statement has no basis in reality. But would I be sexist if I
were to believe it (I don't actually have an opinion either way)? And
can I allow myself to compliment the look of a woman without being
accused of objectifying her simply because so many men and women are
concerned with how one looks? Whoof...<br />
<br />
Another concept that cannot be contradicted with impunity in modern
society is that everybody is equal. Now, I believe that everybody
should have the right to achieve the maximum level of fulfillment in
their lives. But to say that everybody's needs and capabilities are the
same is nonsense. <i>We are all different!</i> I know, this can
become an excuse for accepting or causing injustice, but by denying that
we are different from each other, we run other risks. For example,
physically disabled people are different from people with fully-abled
bodies. If we were to deny it, we couldn't possibly advocate the
presence of ramps in buildings, could we? Peter Singer was accused of
advocating euthanasia of disabled adults because of his position about
unviable newborn babies. Come on!<br />
<br />
In all cases, the key is <i>respect</i>. As long as I respect the
people I am in contact with, regardless of their color, size, gender,
and sexual orientation, I must be able to say what I believe to be
true. Or should I be denied to tell somebody that I think they are
incompetent simply because he/she is black, or a woman, or gay, and my
criticism might be interpreted as discrimination? Let's face it: a
stupid, as well as a genius, can come in any colour and shape!<br />
<br />
What follows is a short section of Peter Singer's book. The section title is <i>Toward an Ethical Life</i> and was first publishe in 1993 in the book <i>How Are We to Live?</i><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 40px; text-align: justify;">
In a society in which
the narrow pursuit of material self-interest is the norm, the
shift to an ethical stance is more radical than many people
realize. In comparison with the needs of people starving in
Somalia, the desire to sample the wines of the leading French
vineyards pales into insignificance. Judged against the suffering
of immobilized rabbits having shampoos dripped into their eyes, a
better shampoo becomes an unworthy goal. The preservation of
old-growth forests should override our desire to use disposable
paper towels. An ethical approach to life does not forbid having
fun or enjoying food and wine, but it changes our sense of
priorities. The effort and expense put into buying fashionable
clothes, the endless search for more and more refined gastronomic
pleasures, the astonishing additional expense that marks out the
prestige car market from the market in cars for people who just
want a reliable means of getting from A to B—all these become
disproportionate to people who can shift perspective long enough
to take themselves, at least for a time, out of the spotlight. If
a higher ethical consciousness spreads, it will utterly change the
society in which we live. <br />
We cannot expect that
this higher ethical consciousness will become universal. There
will always be people who don’t care for anyone or anything, not
even for themselves. There will be others, more numerous and more
calculating, who earn a living by taking advantage of others,
especially the poor and the powerless. We cannot afford to wait
for some coming glorious day when everyone will live in loving
peace and harmony with everyone else. Human nature is not like
that at present, and there is no sign of its changing sufficiently
in the foreseeable future. Since reasoning alone proved incapable
of fully resolving the clash between self-interest and ethics, it
is unlikely that rational argument will persuade every rational
person to act ethically. Even if reason had been able to take us
further, we would still have had to face the reality of a world in
which many people are very far from acting on the basis of
reasoning of any kind, even crudely self-interested reasoning. So
for a long time to come, the world is going to remain a tough
place in which to live. <br />
Nevertheless, we are
part of this world and there is a desperate need to do something
now about the conditions in which people live and die, and to
avoid both social and ecological disaster. There is no time to
focus our thoughts on the possibility of a distant utopian future.
Too many humans and nonhuman animals are suffering now, the
forests are going too quickly, population growth is still out of
control, and if we do not bring greenhouse gas emissions down
rapidly, the lives and homes of 46 million people are at risk in
the Nile and Bengal delta regions alone. Nor can we wait for
governments to bring about the change that is needed. It is not in
the interests of politicians to challenge the fundamental
assumptions of the society they have been elected to lead. If 10
percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical
outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be
more significant than any change of government. The division
between an ethical and a selfish approach to life is far more
fundamental than the difference between the policies of the
political right and the political left. <br />
We have to take the
first step. We must reinstate the idea of living an ethical life
as a realistic and viable alternative to the present dominance of
materialist self-interest. If a critical mass of people with new
priorities were to emerge, and if these people were seen to do
well, in every sense of the term—if their cooperation with each
other brings reciprocal benefits, if they find joy and fulfillment
in their lives—then the ethical attitude will spread, and the
conflict between ethics and self-interest will have been shown to
be overcome, not by abstract reasoning alone, but by adopting the
ethical life as a practical way of living and showing that it
works, psychologically, socially, and ecologically. <br />
Anyone can become part
of the critical mass that offers us a chance of improving the
world before it is too late. You can rethink your goals and
question what you are doing with your life. If your present way of
living does not stand up against an impartial standard of value,
then you can change it. That might mean quitting your job, selling
your house, and going to work for a voluntary organization in
India. More often, the commitment to a more ethical way of living
will be the first step of a gradual but far-reaching evolution in
your lifestyle and in your thinking about your place in the world.
You will take up new causes and find your goals shifting. If you
get involved in your work, money and status will become less
important. From your new perspective, the world will look
different. One thing is certain: you will find plenty of
worthwhile things to do. You will not be bored or lack fulfillment
in your life. Most important of all, you will know that you have
not lived and died for nothing, because you will have become part
of the great tradition of those who have responded to the amount
of pain and suffering in the universe by trying to make the world
a better place. <br />
</div>
<br />
<br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-72945471577579975662014-04-13T15:45:00.001+10:002014-04-13T15:45:22.972+10:00Books: Faster, by James Gleick
I have decided that sometimes I should also recommend books, not
just criticise the books I don't like. Here is the first one. Let's
see how it goes.<br />
<br />
The book is <i>Faster</i>, by James Gleick, the well known author of <i>Chaos</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<div align="center">
<br />
<div align="left">
<br />
I picked up a copy of the book in a reminders' bookshop and it was a very good buy.<br />
<br />
Gleick analyses the roots of the frenetic and ever faster modern life.
The book was first published fifteen years ago, but it hasn't aged at
all. What follows is my interpretation of the essence of the book and
my reflections on its content.<br />
<br />
The world has become very competitive. As a result, everybody keeps
looking for "an edge". That is, for something that will give them a bit
of an advantage over their competitors. This applies to every
organisation and individual living in a modern society, and especially
in western-style capitalistic societies.<br />
<br />
An edge could consist of working a little bit longer, employing a new
technique or tool, optimising your time, exploiting other people's work,
focussing on what counts most, or (and), effectively, anything that
will increase our output, either in terms of quality or (more often) in
terms of quantity.<br />
<br />
How we use/spend/employ/waste/enjoy our time, according to Gleick (and I
agree), is of paramount importance. That's why we keep looking at our
watch; that's why we are so impatient; that's why we hate queues; that's
why we plan and prioritise our days.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, every edge we develop has already been developed by
others, or soon will be. In our attempt to emerge from the masses and
be successful, we keep struggling up a downward escalator, whereby
failure to become more productive means going backward. And, to push the metaphor further, the downward escalator doesn't move at uniform speed. It accelerates.<br />
<br />
This is an intrinsically unstable system, in which a positive feedback
leads to explosive conclusions: we work harder and faster to emerge but,
as everybody else does it as well, we need to work even faster. This
has made possible incredible achievements, but we are paying those
achievements with our health and wellbeing.<br />
<br />
It wasn't always like this. Before the industrial revolution or even
just before the introduction of production lines, time was <i>not</i>
money. But for the past good one hundred years everything is money,
including time. Even if, contrary to money and despite colloquialisms,
time cannot be gained or saved: every second spent is lost forever and
cannot ever been recovered.<br />
<br />
H.G. Wells, in his "A Modern Utopia" of 1905, described a future in
which we would work five hours a week. Modern technology might allow to
do so, but the increase in efficiency and productivity generated by
technology, instead of automatically resulting in a reduction of working
hours, is used to a large extent to fuel growth. The average number of
weekly working hours has been steadily falling in developed countries,
but we are still very far from the Utopian levels predicted by Wells.<br />
<br />
During my working life in Italy, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, and
France, I was steadily under pressure to work longer hours. Australia
was the worst offender, and I often had to work 60 h/week or more. You
might think that it was because I was slow or not good enough, but that
was not the case. Everybody around me struggled. When I worked at
Prime R&D in Canberra, we had a HR person to take care of only
thirty developers. Such a very high ratio (1/30) was deemed necessary
to enable us to survive the pressure we had to endure and the resulting
conflicts. Perhaps I enjoyed reading <i>Faster</i> because it resonated with what I had experienced.<br />
<br />
The book is also full of snippets of time-related information that I found very interesting.<br />
<br />
For example, at MacDonald's, <i>in 1997 its marketers tried to speed up [...] by offering refunds to any customer not served within fifty-five seconds</i> (p.245). That's what I would call a pressure-cooker environment, even if at MacDonald's everything is fried! ;-)<br />
</div>
</div>
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-25407385337614842772014-04-13T13:08:00.000+10:002014-04-13T13:08:01.651+10:00Star Trek DTI: Watching the Clock - How disappointing!
In 1997 I discovered the existence of Star Trek novels. Since
then, I bought and read 146 novels, mostly in <i>The Next
Generation</i> series. To be precise: 97 TNG, 4 OS, 3 DS9,
26 Voyager, 5 Enterprise, and 11 New Frontier. Very recently,
I discovered that Pocket Books had started publishing a new series,
centred on the Department of Temporal Investigation (DTI). As
I have always liked stories involving time travel and time
paradoxes, I immediately bought the two DTI novels published so far,
and started reading the first one, <i>Watching the Clock</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<div align="center">
<br />
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<br />
At the time of writing this post, I have read 287 of its 488
pages. I will finish it, but it has been a disappointment.
Before saying what I don't like in it, I will reproduce for you
the index of major sections, chapters, and subsections of the
first 100 pages:<br />
<br />
PRESENT TIME - STARDATE 58188.4 TO 58193.8<br />
1 March 10, 2381 Common Era, Gregorian
Calendar - A Tuesday<br />
DTI Branch Office - San Francisco, North Am, Earth -
18:32 UTC<br />
<i>U.S.S. Everett</i>
NCC-72392 - March 12, 2381 CE (A Thursday) - 03:14 UTC<br />
03:21 UTC<br />
05:47 UTC<br />
06:11 UTC<br />
08:27 UTC<br />
Regulus Passenger Lines
Transport <i>Verity</i> - 10:36 UTC<br />
<i> U.S.S. Everett</i> -
11:02 UTC<br />
11:37 UTC<br />
18:02 UTC<br />
18:27 UTC<br />
DOWNTIME - STARDATE 41697.9 TO 41906.7<br />
2 Kartika 13, 2286 Saka Era, Indian
National Calendar - A Wednesday<br />
Dulmur Residence - Motilal
City, Nehru Colony - 05:46 UTC<br />
Indira City - 13:27 UTC<br />
Dulmur Residence - 17:54
UTC<br />
Vandor IV - Agrahayana 7,
2286 SE (A Friday) - 20:43 UTC<br />
20:52 UTC<br />
PRESENT TIME - STARDATE 58281 TO 58365.9<br />
3 Julian Day 2590805 - A Monday<br />
DTI Headquarters -
Greenwich, European Alliance, Earth - 14:11 UTC<br />
Julian Days 2590812 to
2590823<br />
Julian Days 2590825 to
2590833<br />
Julian Days 2590834 to
2590838<br />
Julian Days 2590841 to
2590849<br />
DOWNTIME - STARDATE 42692.8 TO 42704.5<br />
4 Day 18 of et'Khior, Year of ShiKahr
9051 - A Saturday<br />
Lucsly Residence - San
Francisco - 14:54 UTC<br />
DTI Branch Office - San
Francisco - 16:14 UTC<br />
Shuttlecraft <i>Deutsch</i>
- Traversing Sector 006 - 21:16 UTC<br />
Warlock Station - 19
et'Khior, YS 9051 (A Sunday) - 19:59 UTC<br />
20 et'Khior, YS 9051 (A
Monday) - 07:06 UTC<br />
<br />
What is immediately apparent from the titles of the major
sections is the alternance of events in the present and downtime
(i.e., in the past).<br />
<br />
First of all, according to Wikipedia, Star Trek The Next
Generation Writer's/Director's Guide of March 23, 1987 (p. 13)
defines stardate as follows:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>A stardate is a five-digit number followed by a
decimal point and one more digit. Example: "41254.7." The
first two digits of the stardate are </i><i><u>always</u></i><i>
"41." The 4 stands for 24th century, the 1 indicates first
season</i><i>. The additional three leading digits will
progress unevenly during the course of the season from 000
to 999. The digit following the decimal point is generally
regarded as a day counter.</i><br />
</blockquote>
As the DTI series is contemporary to TNG and Voyager, stardates
beginning with 58 are wrong. Another mistake: the
differences in stardates of the major sections are clearly too
large. For example, 5.4 in the first section, while
everything happens between a Tuesday and a Thusday, which would
imply a stardate change of 0.3.<br />
<br />
But there is a more substantial problem: headings are meant to
help the reader understand what's going on, but things like
"Kartika 13, 2286 Saka Era" and "Day 18 of et'Khior" are at best
irrelevant and at worst confusing. Furthermore, and
somewhat ridiculously, although the dates are given in a cryptic way, the hours are always given in UTC and there is
always the day of the week. Does Bennett expects us to believe that
Greenwich time is used on a planet that follows an "et'Khior"
calendar (whatever that is)? Or that they have seven-day
weeks? I find it pathetic.<br />
<br />
Before I forget, the
Julian Day of January 1, 2000, was 2,451,545. How can it
suddenly be back to 2590805 in 2381?<br />
<br />
I hate useless/wrong/confusing things only done for show!<br />
<br />
The bottom line is that you should only look at the distinction
between PRESENT TIME and DOWNTIME, consider the UTC time (which
is sometimes marginally useful), and ignore the rest.<br />
<br />
Besides the detail I have just talked about, there are two
further (and, in my opinion, more serious) issues: the first one concerns the use of references to events
described in the TV series, and the second one has to do with how the story
flows (or doesn't).<br />
<br />
Bennett seems to have gone out of his way to cram into the novel
as many references as possible to timeflow-related incidents
that occurred to Kirk, Picard, and Janeway. For a fan, it
is nice to find references, but Bennett does it
excessively. As far as I can see, he refers to all time-inversions and
time-loops that occurred in the TV series, with descriptions and
stardates. After the first couple, I started thinking: Oh
no... not another one! I'm curious to see what he
will refer to in his second novel...<br />
<br />
But I have left last the biggest criticism I have about this
novel: it is full of irrelevant facts, which only contribute to
interrupt the flow of the narrative. I'm pretty confident
that if we removed all Downtime sections, the main story would
come out better. Flashbacks have been used in fiction for
centuries. Some novels have even been written as single
flashbacks. But these Downtime stories are like
self-contained short stories, with little or no connection to
the main story. He didn't need so many flashbacks to
introduce the characters and provide context.<br />
<br />
In general, I find the main story fragmentary and
unfocussed. It might be due to the presence of so many
distracting flashbacks, but I am not sure. Perhaps Bennett
thought that the silly dates, the many references to past
events, and the plethora of races new and old would keep ST fans
happy. But it is nothing more than a heap of clutter. There is no substitute for a good plot
presented in a clean, uncluttered way. Especially when
talking about time travel.<br />
</div>
</div>
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-7198777435299489252014-03-29T21:41:00.001+11:002014-03-29T21:41:17.255+11:00Authors' Mistakes #29 - P.Warren & M.StreeterI recently completed reading <i>cyber alert, by </i>Peter Warren
& Michael Streeter. Not uninteresting and, in general,
easy to read. But several mistakes crept in.<br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 100%px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><b>#</b></td>
<td valign="top"><b>Page</b></td>
<td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">1</td>
<td valign="top">5</td>
<td valign="top">"How can she allowed". A "be" between
"she" and "allowed" is missing.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">2</td>
<td valign="top">27</td>
<td valign="top">"would come under attack from sustained
attack from determined criminals". One "attack" and
one "from" would be enough. The two words "attack
from" between "under" and "sustained" should go.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">3</td>
<td valign="top">28</td>
<td valign="top">"a person who no real proven desire". A
"had" between "who" and "no" is missing.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">4</td>
<td valign="top">31</td>
<td valign="top">"take the view that - as I did - that
Parliament". It is in a quote, but it would surprise
me if the first "that" was in the original text.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">5</td>
<td valign="top">43</td>
<td valign="top">"the attack on the twin towers of 9 September
2001". If the Americans did what the rest of the world
does and write the day before the month, such confusions
would never take place. They could also go metric and
forget gallons, inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces and
pounds, but that's another story. Then, perhaps, when
they get going, they could also switch from Fahrenheit to
Centigrade. After all, Star Trek was metric!</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">6</td>
<td valign="top">57</td>
<td valign="top">"The work carried out at such sites as
Symantec in Hampshire is just a part of the massive security
effort aimed at keeping computers and the internet from
being attacked by criminal and terrorists". It sounds
good, but it is impossible to prevent attacks. All you
can do is prevent the attacks from having damaging or
catastrophic results.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">7</td>
<td valign="top">61</td>
<td valign="top"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4604011709908623764" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>"in spite of the avowal of government units
[...] that part of their remit". There should be an
"it is" between "that" and "part".</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">8</td>
<td valign="top">95</td>
<td valign="top">"Such is the speed with which criminals role
out new technology". Replace "role" with "roll".</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">9</td>
<td valign="top">125</td>
<td valign="top">"the source's impeccable credentials [...]
least raise at the very least some intriguing
questions". Replace "least raise at the very least"
with "at the very least raise".</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">10</td>
<td valign="top">146</td>
<td valign="top">"not to reply on operating systems that
worked on just once basic code". Two mistakes in one
sentence: replace "reply" with "rely" and "once" with "one".</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">11</td>
<td valign="top">152</td>
<td valign="top">"The Philippines did not that at the time
have". Remove "that".</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">12</td>
<td valign="top">225</td>
<td valign="top">"trend is beginning to merge". With
what? Replace "merge" with "emerge".</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
OK. I concede that none of the mistakes I detected are
conceptual. It is already something. But they are still
annoying, though. For the record, I do read books in which I
don't detect any mistake at all!<br />
<br />
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child:
Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes:
Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman:
Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger
Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton
& Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child:
The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall:
Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow
Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green:
The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack:
Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford:
Apocalypse</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva:
The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy:
Locked On</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David:
After Earth</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston:
Impact</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian:
The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci:
Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI
Miami</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L.
Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami
#2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack
Greene & Alessandro Massignani</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/authors-mistakes-28-peter-james.html">Peter
James</a>Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-47555478836270330742014-03-29T20:47:00.002+11:002014-03-29T20:47:41.184+11:00Authors' Mistakes #28 - Peter JamesThe blurb on the back cover of Peter James's <i>Perfect People</i> defines it <i>the perfect thriller</i>. But I found out,
as I almost always do, that a reasonably interesting story was
marred by editing errors. Not too many, but enough to annoy me (but then, I am very
easily annoyed...)<br />
<br />
<div align="center">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiar_nsbOSP0xCD1r2zCLMBBvYDNtWLQt06oh-4-GC3-VOJQ16fGJRYSvpabKADTv0Lhs2hLIRgQPAHsE1pq7ynrM-g1wMZx3UE9aqBA-kTTk8zJe8dATEvSolOvjnL1aVIYLlJpkgdxO_f/s1600/2014-03-29+Authors%27+Mistakes+%2328+-+Peter+James.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiar_nsbOSP0xCD1r2zCLMBBvYDNtWLQt06oh-4-GC3-VOJQ16fGJRYSvpabKADTv0Lhs2hLIRgQPAHsE1pq7ynrM-g1wMZx3UE9aqBA-kTTk8zJe8dATEvSolOvjnL1aVIYLlJpkgdxO_f/s1600/2014-03-29+Authors'+Mistakes+%2328+-+Peter+James.png" height="400" width="260" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 100%px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><b>#</b></td>
<td valign="top"><b>Page</b></td>
<td valign="top"><b>Description</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">1</td>
<td valign="top">2</td>
<td valign="top">"The deck drops away beneath him, then moment
later is rising, pressing up on his feet like an elevator
floor, heaving his stomach up against his rib cage".
It seems that neither James nor the book's editors have any
notion of Physics. And they have never taken a fast elevator either.
When an elevator quickly accelerates upwards or quickly
stops its descent, its floor needs to exercise an increased
upward pressure on the sole of your feet, which, in turn,
transfer that pressure to the rest of your body. When
your pelvis pushes upwards against your internal organs in order to
make it go faster upwards or slower downwards, you actually
feel as if your stomach were pushed down! It is when
you quickly stop an upward movement or quickly start a
downward movement that your stomach, so to speak, hits your
throat. But in that case, your feet, rather than being
pushed up, might actually come off the floor.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">2</td>
<td valign="top">16/17</td>
<td valign="top">The first page of a document is marked "Page
1 of 16", but after showing it to Naomi, Dr Dettore states
that the document contains "another sixteen pages".
Well, are they 16 or 17?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">3</td>
<td valign="top">140</td>
<td valign="top">"Just as silently as they had surfaced and
struck, the Disciple of the Third Millenium seem to have
faded back into ether". Grammar mistake: "seemed"
should replace "seem".</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">4</td>
<td valign="top">242</td>
<td valign="top">John reads and sends emails from his computer
and plays chess with Gus in Brisbane, but, according to
James, "he didn't leave the computer online either here or
at the office". James must know that computers can
communicate with the rest of the world only when they are
online. He probably meant to say that John switched
off the computer or disconnected it from the network when he
wasn't there. But it is an example of very sloppy
writing.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">5</td>
<td valign="top">263</td>
<td valign="top">"John, she was accusing you and I of being
responsible". Please! Is this how we are
supposed to talk nowadays? Do we also say "she will
kill I" and "she saw I?"</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">6</td>
<td valign="top">283</td>
<td valign="top">Phoebe was writing a Word document on her
computer. Her mother, to stop her, "walked over to the
wall and yanked the plug out". Yeah. The problem
is that Phoebe's computer was a laptop. Laptops have
batteries, don't they?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">7</td>
<td valign="top">290</td>
<td valign="top">"Was this her way telling them". The
"of" between "way" and "telling" is missing. Or do
people speak like that?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">8</td>
<td valign="top">415</td>
<td valign="top"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4604011709908623764" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>While in Rome, "He walked over to the
window. It was a huge, heavy old sash,
double-glazed". Well, I lived in Rome for longer than
30 years and then visited it several times, staying in
several hotels. I can testify that sash windows, new or
old, do not exist in Rome. Actually, I never saw one
in Italy. Perhaps some Americans or British living
there import them to feel at home, but I doubt it. And
in Rome I never saw a double-glazed window either.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">9</td>
<td valign="top">416</td>
<td valign="top">"You have a reservation on Alitalia flight
1050 to Dubai". But Alitalia flies (and has always
flown) to Abu Dhabi, not Dubai.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">10</td>
<td valign="top">426</td>
<td valign="top">"...into another elevator. John's
stomach dropped [this is right]. Then, moments later,
the floor pressed up against his feet". Again the
feet pressed up? James and the editor seem
convinced than this is what happens when an upward elevator stops...</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
To top it off, the prose was not fluid at all. It was quirky
and dry. It was not a pleasure to read it.<br />
<br />
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child:
Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes:
Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman:
Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger
Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media
and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton
& Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child:
The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall:
Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow
Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn:
American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green:
The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack:
Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford:
Apocalypse</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva:
The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy:
Locked On</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David:
After Earth</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston:
Impact</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian:
The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon:
Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci:
Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon:
The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI
Miami</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L.
Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI
Miami
#2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/authors-mistakes-27-jack-greene.html">Jack
Greene & Alessandro Massignani</a>Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-62376819127640255042014-03-20T21:49:00.001+11:002014-03-20T21:52:01.242+11:00Blind Cut<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4604011709908623764" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Earlier this evening, I saw on ABC News an interview with a boy who has
problems in identifying the value of banknotes. His mother has just
presented to the federal government a petition with more than 50,000
signatures to do something about it. With so many people who have
problems with eye sight, it makes a lot of sense that money bills should
be easily recognisable by touch.<br />
<br />
Canada has adopted bills that have bumps, but the concern is that, with prolonged use, the bumps might flatten out and become useless.<br />
<br />
I have a solution that would be easy to implement and wouldn't even require to print new bills. Here it is:<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 100%px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="top"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4604011709908623764" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3OAqg4RRcCQMqVj1_oEQMfYdMhvjlotQErGXsA5mkPnOoIo0NULJ59cMbd5SEWsLR5poRbhW6xDnuyYXTs0WBuJJAFgRv0y9g8LKw51H5Fpvua3Z4IPhyL9xSHNKv3L0aZZdlyDFFE9Ek/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+10.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3OAqg4RRcCQMqVj1_oEQMfYdMhvjlotQErGXsA5mkPnOoIo0NULJ59cMbd5SEWsLR5poRbhW6xDnuyYXTs0WBuJJAFgRv0y9g8LKw51H5Fpvua3Z4IPhyL9xSHNKv3L0aZZdlyDFFE9Ek/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+10.png" height="155" width="320" /></a></td>
<td align="center" valign="top"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjajpfFhQBksGn3me94-jH-HJkAinxZHiX29u9Eum2gCWH6x8wSvTY2ZdYhXVEH7dKG9zDWuduHE7aO0KcEKJDuLJa-iSLnmFQ7Gw_wCUlMYTiRqQ1zVH79gDHylHjhsJgcOaX3hT3gwAaO/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+20.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjajpfFhQBksGn3me94-jH-HJkAinxZHiX29u9Eum2gCWH6x8wSvTY2ZdYhXVEH7dKG9zDWuduHE7aO0KcEKJDuLJa-iSLnmFQ7Gw_wCUlMYTiRqQ1zVH79gDHylHjhsJgcOaX3hT3gwAaO/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+20.png" height="145" width="320" /></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="top"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifqDBF3yAq0q0apDSC3NnauE7J3xnhsntyu1jYpkkhmvE2aEfS_gQTSyVioE668i8f2PyfUBOVSD8Kh6Fy_O6hsldwq-hIzNbXAdqchMRdfyKH5S6RJmlpa5D8uf53UWtqmO0SpNFBN7hl/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+50.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifqDBF3yAq0q0apDSC3NnauE7J3xnhsntyu1jYpkkhmvE2aEfS_gQTSyVioE668i8f2PyfUBOVSD8Kh6Fy_O6hsldwq-hIzNbXAdqchMRdfyKH5S6RJmlpa5D8uf53UWtqmO0SpNFBN7hl/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+50.png" height="140" width="320" /></a></td>
<td align="center" valign="top"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCGepSE0x4GgSVccFWJEQ_6OXIBeDl_yq_v75YVMPl_V4f1ZE8IYZGcFr2eFG7NlASnSGzLYsO-2weqtJ5cymRQNq4s5wyo0IIO2TIhyphenhyphenBKHdgEwpNlDDtxVvp2qO0Fs8Avo4BC8MPontek/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+100.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCGepSE0x4GgSVccFWJEQ_6OXIBeDl_yq_v75YVMPl_V4f1ZE8IYZGcFr2eFG7NlASnSGzLYsO-2weqtJ5cymRQNq4s5wyo0IIO2TIhyphenhyphenBKHdgEwpNlDDtxVvp2qO0Fs8Avo4BC8MPontek/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+100.png" height="134" width="320" /></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
That is, cut a corner from the $10, two corners from the $20, three
corners from the $50, and all four corners from the $100. The $5 bills
can remain as they are:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixIJj4QhDlTs3kuGtJM8Srf0ykdQ2ZONvQw7qgm9U58sSaMb1uWjm1j1wm4_j31eqA7NnM97ZzVBCTmxuiy4OZm_PFuSxAoD4cdgeij4Ui5Vlg4Y93Kmv4PCsz-DiemX6sG7hTQ1KWuj4C/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+5.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixIJj4QhDlTs3kuGtJM8Srf0ykdQ2ZONvQw7qgm9U58sSaMb1uWjm1j1wm4_j31eqA7NnM97ZzVBCTmxuiy4OZm_PFuSxAoD4cdgeij4Ui5Vlg4Y93Kmv4PCsz-DiemX6sG7hTQ1KWuj4C/s1600/2014-03-20+Blind+Cut+5.png" height="163" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
Nobody would confuse the bills anymore, and the current bills could be
cut by the Reserve Bank precisely to spec. The alternative of leaving
the $100 unchanged and cut more corners as the value of the bill
decreases wouldn't be as good because:<br />
<ul>
<li>The smallest bills probably are the most widely used, while few
people handle the $100 bills. Therefore, it makes sense to apply the
most severe "mutilation" to the least used denomination.</li>
<li>"More cuts, more value" is easier to remember.</li>
</ul>
Unfortunately, the system could still be abused, and somebody might cut
a corner of a small denomination and give it to a non-seeing person to
get away with a smaller payment than due. But this wouldn't be worse
than what is happening now...Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-253453871731242682014-02-08T12:48:00.000+11:002014-02-08T12:48:42.807+11:00CSI Miami got its Physics wrongIn the episode titled <i>Sinner Takes All</i> of the 10th and final season of CSI Miami, the CGI people got an animation wrong and nobody noticed.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheM1Tx_EAFWXgcX9zHTc97S06jrSshgrldUGRjaRoNl_PiMOVDXT12txnC643Fy6SwDp8AsECpeYnlPukRoCUJ_mIETQanPxnG7d7C46nrvEQ14Y9eFtbNJ63PyrCOYSssxbUlr9nB0YYk/s1600/2014-02-08+CSI+Miami+got+its+Physics+wrong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheM1Tx_EAFWXgcX9zHTc97S06jrSshgrldUGRjaRoNl_PiMOVDXT12txnC643Fy6SwDp8AsECpeYnlPukRoCUJ_mIETQanPxnG7d7C46nrvEQ14Y9eFtbNJ63PyrCOYSssxbUlr9nB0YYk/s1600/2014-02-08+CSI+Miami+got+its+Physics+wrong.jpg" height="400" width="282" /></a></div>
<br />
They showed a bullet in slow motion. The grooves caused by the rifling
impression of the barrel were left-handed, but the bullet was spinning
in the opposite direction, as shown in the following sketch:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtkllww3UN57mR-ShX_CH3dOH1BYdAOeIQPBOPPfJ9rhhT6pcksMdv8ge1KJhoHgVkE2yaeh_zfY9z35ONGBLarMFIMN5Eu9TbzY_Sgd47HGRj7XZ1Jxp98GJ8uNS0epez7WStcHP0N4nM/s1600/2014-02-08+CSI+Miami+got+its+Physics+wrong+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtkllww3UN57mR-ShX_CH3dOH1BYdAOeIQPBOPPfJ9rhhT6pcksMdv8ge1KJhoHgVkE2yaeh_zfY9z35ONGBLarMFIMN5Eu9TbzY_Sgd47HGRj7XZ1Jxp98GJ8uNS0epez7WStcHP0N4nM/s1600/2014-02-08+CSI+Miami+got+its+Physics+wrong+1.png" height="320" width="154" /></a></div>
<br />
That was clearly wrong. To convince yourself of the mistake, imagine to
look at the inside of the barrel, as shown in this classic image from
Sean Connery's Bond films (actually, I flipped it horizontally because
the rifling in the original image was right-handed):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Nv9Vt3RzeApvg-xpfXJlNCoJ5txd3NpPrHlGGi4tHiV_8Nl7ujXaNy5gsDm85ZN0l2GS31__CINh3evsp79neTASidifQmcyMazSXJa8e0YForSnhysGxskGtRXK79fyji6P7QQjdmtw/s1600/2014-02-08+CSI+Miami+got+its+Physics+wrong+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Nv9Vt3RzeApvg-xpfXJlNCoJ5txd3NpPrHlGGi4tHiV_8Nl7ujXaNy5gsDm85ZN0l2GS31__CINh3evsp79neTASidifQmcyMazSXJa8e0YForSnhysGxskGtRXK79fyji6P7QQjdmtw/s1600/2014-02-08+CSI+Miami+got+its+Physics+wrong+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div align="center">
<br /></div>
The bullet, forced to go through the barrel, would spin in the same
direction of the rifling, not in the opposite one as shown in Miami CSI.Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-2438038767704629072014-02-04T00:16:00.003+11:002014-02-04T00:19:25.015+11:00The Aborigines and the Australian ConstitutionAustralian Aborigines request recognition in the Constitution. Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, stated last August (see <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/10/constitutional-proposal-on-indigenous-australians-will-be-ready-in-a-year-tony-abbott">theguardian.com</a>) that such a recognition would complete our constitution. This is obviously nonsense, as our constitution is <i>not</i> incomplete, and any addition to it would be an amendment.<br />
<br />
All politicians make favourable noises concerning such an amendment.
Therefore, it is almost certain that we will arrive to a referendum, so
that all Australians will have their say about it.<br />
<br />
As I don't care a little bit about political correctness, I will state straight away that I will vote against such an amendment.<br />
<br />
I am not racist (I know: most racists would state exactly that, and you
are free to think that I am one of them if it pleases you; I know I am
not), but I cannot see what the presence for 40,000 years of Aborigines
on this continent has to do with the Australian Constitution. A
constitution is the basic law of the country and, as such, there is no
need for it to state that somebody was present before the modern state
was formed.<br />
<br />
The Aborigines were mistreated, abused, and killed. Still today, they
clearly represent a disadvantaged minority and are often discriminated
against. I consider it a moral duty of all Australians to work towards
redressing centuries of injustice and to make possible for Aborigines to
have the same opportunities that most Australians take for granted.
And it is not only an altruistic attitude, because there would be great
benefits for the whole society.<br />
<br />
We should also be prepared to support the Aboriginal communities for as
long as necessary, but the constitution shouldn't mention any particular
section of the Australian nation. It should be equally valid for all
of us. I would rather create an Australian Bill of Rights and then
focus on ensuring that all Australians, Aboriginal or not, enjoy them.Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-15222683044203008392014-01-28T22:31:00.002+11:002014-01-28T22:31:54.873+11:00Authors' Mistakes #27 - Jack Greene & Alessandro MassignaniThis time I want to report a case of appalling copyediting (and
proofreading). When I read <i>The Naval War in the
Mediterranean 1940-1943</i> by Jack Greene & Alessandro
Massignani I couldn't believe my eyes. An otherwise
interesting and obviously well researched book was spoiled by so
many mistakes that I almost gave up marking them. But I
didn't, and you will find their list below the cover image.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizhOUjeXXTeVHdqqEmEXE8noAcwG3XFLYdMaMBmkR8xgn8ivLgPKqB4eFLsi6R569nIEpVzkTA8o2WhIndstaNkYl54Kx9S_I9jKuyj_AEIP2U2XbAn5b_jsiTj_8EtUU3OozZ7oGZAXPM/s1600/2014-01-27+Authors%27+Mistakes+%2327+-+Jack+Greene+&+Alessandro+Massignani.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizhOUjeXXTeVHdqqEmEXE8noAcwG3XFLYdMaMBmkR8xgn8ivLgPKqB4eFLsi6R569nIEpVzkTA8o2WhIndstaNkYl54Kx9S_I9jKuyj_AEIP2U2XbAn5b_jsiTj_8EtUU3OozZ7oGZAXPM/s1600/2014-01-27+Authors'+Mistakes+%2327+-+Jack+Greene+&+Alessandro+Massignani.jpg" height="400" width="277" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 100%px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><b>#</b><br />
</td>
<td valign="top"><b>Page</b><br />
</td>
<td valign="top"><b>Description</b><br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">1<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">8<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"then vice-versa" should be "than vice-versa"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">2<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">18<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Britian" should be "Britain"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">3<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">26<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Baleri" should be "Baleari"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">4<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">26<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"ot" should be "of"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">5<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">35<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Pri-colo" should be "Pricolo"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">6<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">36<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"hangers" should be "hangars" (we are taking
about airplanes, not wardrobes!<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">7<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">44<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Albatross" should be "Albatros", because it
refers to the name of an Italian ship. This mistake
occurs twice.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">8<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">45<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"lead" shoul be "led"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">9<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">46<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"diffrence" should be "difference"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">10<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">54<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"would named" should be "was named"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">11<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">72<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"from in Sicily" should be "from Sicily"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">12<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">74<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Boliano" should be "Bolzano"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">13<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">77<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"a air" should be "an air"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">14<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">93<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"decided inside" should be "decided instead"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">15<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">96<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"maiali was" should be "maiale was", because
"maiali" is plural<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">16<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">104<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"the two of" should be "two of"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">17<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">117<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"mading" should be "making"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">18<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">121<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"crusiers" should be "cruisers"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">19<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">127<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"While touring the port large crowds had
turned out" should be "while he was touring the port large
crouds had turned out", because it was Cunningham who was
touring the port, not the crowds. I would have also
inserted a comma after "the port", but let's not be too
picky...<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">20<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">131<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"withdrawl" should be "withdrawal"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">21<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">141<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Very bad grammar. It could be fixed for
example by replacing "and they promised the Italian"
with "and their failed promise to the Italians to provide"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">22<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">144<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Marinkommando" should be "Marinekommando"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">23<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">156<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"It has always taken" should be "It has
always been taken"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">24<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">159<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"commision" should be "commission"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">25<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">165<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"approachs" should "approaches"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">26<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">170<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Calcutta, Calcutta and Carlisle" should be
"Calcutta and Carlisle"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">27<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">192<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Guilia" should be "Giulia". This is an
example of the common mistake made by English speakers when they write
"Guiseppe" instead of "Giuseppe" and "Guilio" instead of "Giulio" (my name... sigh...)<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">28<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">199<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"They was" should be "They were"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">29<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">200<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Bad, bad grammar: "Four freighters were at
sea, three in a convoy escorted by six destroyers that had left Taranto
on the afternoon of the 16<sup>th</sup>, and the other by a destroyer and a torpedo-boat."
Grammatically, this sentence means that the six destroyers escorting
three of the freighters had left Taranto, leaving unclear where the
three escorted freighters were coming from. But I believe that the
intention was to say that the three freighters had left Taranto together
with their escort of six destroyers. At the very least, the sentence
is tortuous and ambiguous. I would have said: "Four freighters were at
sea. Three had left Taranto on the afternoon of the 16th with an escort
of six destroyers, and the fourth freighter was escorted by a destroyer
and a torpedo-boat." Or something like that.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">30<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">204<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"nearly being colliding" should be "nearly colliding"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">31<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">204<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"such just an attemp" shoud be "such an attempt"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">32<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">204<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">There are two consecutive "that"s, one before a
quotation and one at the beginning of it. One of the two should not be
there. I'm not sure whether the quoted text contained the opening
"that", but I would have removed it anyway. it doesn't seem nice to start a quotation with "... that".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">33<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">204<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">The authors inserted a "[<i>sic</i>]" within a
quotation after the word "neutralising". They should have not, because
they were quoting admiral Cunningham, and in British English
"neutralise" is correct. It is only in American English that the word
would have been spelled as "neutralize". They were not quoting Nimitz, were they?<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">34<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">206<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"try and convince" should be "try to convince". To use "and" after "try" is a colloquialism and should have no place in a History book.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">35<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">206<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Ricarrdi" should be "Riccardi"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">36<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">206<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"shipbuilding capacity was not sufficient to
replace losses of warships and particularly merchant ships which were
being sunk by the Allies in increasing numbers". First of all,
"particularly" is out of place, because "merchant ships" are not a
subset of "warships". Secondly, which should be preceded by a comma. I
would have said: "shipbuilding capacity was not sufficient to replace losses of warships
and of merchant ships, which were being sunk by the Allies in
increasing numbers". It would still remain a somewhat awkward sentence, but at least it would be correct.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">37<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">206<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"liaision" should be "liaison"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">38<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">207<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"the supply situation to North Africa" should be "the supply situation in North Africa"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">39<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">210<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"the need to chose" should be "the need to choose"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">40<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">211<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"took place at Bremen" should be "took place in Bremen"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">41<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">211<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"(known as Ra.Ri from <i>Radiodetectortelemetri</i>)". First of all "Radiodetectortelemetri" is not Italian. This term refers to rangefinders that Ugo Tiberio developed for the <i>Regia Marina</i>,
but it was written "Radio-Detector Telemetri", or "RDT". The
abbreviation "RaRi" (without any period in between) was used to
abbreviate the word "Radiotelemetri", which was introduced later.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to determine the meaning of "Ri",
although I suspect that it might refer to "Ritorno", which means
"return". "Radio Ritorno" would make sense, as a <i>radiotelemetro</i>
measures the distance of an object by determining how long it takes for a
radio wave to come back to the generating antenna after being reflected
by the object in question.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">42<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">212<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"would be pass" should be "would be passed"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">43<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">213<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Ammirglio" should be "Ammiraglio"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">44<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">227<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"less agricultural land then" should be "less agricultural land than"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">45<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">235<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Stormos" should be "Stormi". The authors built the plural of the Italian "stormo" as if it were an English word.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">46<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">236<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Gioherti" should be "Gioberti"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">47<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">240<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">A "pearl" of grammatical beauty: "The German
3rd Motor Torpedo Boat Flottilla under Lieutenant-Commander Kemnade
operating against the retreating British fleeing Tobruk and sank the
South African minesweeper <i>Parktown</i> and some small craft." MMmmm... "operating and sank"?<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">48<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">240<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"'<i>Fingerspitzengefühl</i>'<i> </i>('gut feeling')". Here there are two mistakes. First of all, <i>Fingerspitzengefühl</i> literally means "feeling with the tips of the fingers" and is used in German
to indicate an attention to a finely tuned intuition. I would
translate it as something like "finely tuned intuition". The
translation ("good feeling") would be in German the simpler "Gutes
gefühl". Secondly, "gut" is not English, is it?<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">49<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">241<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"on other hand" should be "on the other hand"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">50<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">262<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Of these, 10,932 of them" should be either "Of these, 10,932" or "10,932 of them"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">51<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">263<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"'Soldatis'" should be "'Soldati'".
"Soldati" means "soldiers" and is already plural ("soldato" being the
singular form). In any case, the plural in Italian is not done by
appending an 's' to the singular. "Soldati" was the name of a class of destroyers.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">52<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">268<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"had to taken" should be "had to be taken"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">53<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">269<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"took nearer 60 seconds" should be "took close to 60 seconds", or perhaps "approximately 60 seconds"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">54<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">269<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"also played apart" should be "also played a part"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">55<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">273<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"they was" should be "they were"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">56<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">273<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"but they along with Vichy were fooled". OK. Commas
are out of fashion, but if they didn't want to write "but they, along
with Vichy, were fooled", they could have said "but they were fooled
along with Vichy". Or not?<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">57<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">278<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"MFP of 200 tons (there were three types, A, B, and C)". they should have said that MFP stands for <i>Marinefährprahm</i>
(naval ferry barge). Also, there were several types of MFPs, not just
three. And, in any case, why write a comma after "types" instead of a
colon?
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">58<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">281<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"losees" should be "losses"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">59<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">284<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"were the PT boats which" should be "were the PT boats that"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">60<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">285<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"attack transports which" should be "attack transports, which"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">61<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">288<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Pantellaria" shoul be "Pantelleria"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">62<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">289<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"partol" should be "patrol"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">63<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">290<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">" the where" should be ", where"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">64<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">294<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"afetr" should be "after"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">65<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">294<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">On the same line: "oi" should be "of"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">66<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">294<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Again, a few lines below: "oi" should be "of". How can it be? 'I' and 'F' are not even close on the keybord...<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">67<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">296<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"as these" should be "these"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">68<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">298<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"south of the Appenines". Two problems here. Firsly, "Apennines"
is the correct spelling in English. Secondly, the Apennines are a
mountain chain that stretches from the Ligurian Alps in northern Italy
to Reggio Calabria, at the tip of the Italian peninsula. Therefore,
"south of the Apennines" is close to meaningless.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">69<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">303<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"disagreeded" should be "disagreed"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">70<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">306<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Abdeil" should be "Abdiel". The Royal Navy had over the years three ships named Abdiel.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">71<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">306<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"Guilio" should be "Giulio". Again...<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">72<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">307<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"It flys" should be "It flies".<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">73<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">309<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"the Germans had effectively air superiority" is preceded by a comma. It should be preceded by a full stop or, at least, a semicolon.<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">74<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">311<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"and were often had not been" ???<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">75<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">312<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">Another "try and" that should be "try to"<br />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign="top">76<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">314<br />
</td>
<td valign="top">"which was within their means" should be ", although it was within their means"<br />
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
To top it off, there are even two mistakes in the captions of the
images inserted in the middle of the book: Another occurrence of the
infamous "Guilio" instead "Giulio" and a wrong date (they wrote 1950
instead 1940).<br />
<br />
Almost a mistake every four pages of text. Even MS Word would have
detected many of them. And what I have is the 2011 edition, not the
original edition of 2002. There has also been a US edition...<br />
<br />
Now, I have probably made mistakes in this article. But this is just bloody me, not the Frontline Books in London.<br />
<br />
This is a real shame. I'm seriously considering sending the list of mistakes to the publisher...<br />
<br />
For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’
Mistakes” articles:<br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/also-masters-make-mistakes.html">Lee
Child: Die Trying</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/authors-mistakes-2-colin-forbes.html">Colin
Forbes: Double Jeopardy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/authors-mistakes-3-lost-in-space.html">Akiva
Goldsman: Lost in Space</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/authors-mistakes-4-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: Extreme Measures</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-5-academic-textbook-on.html">Máire
Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods
for Media and Cultural Studies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-6-michael-crichton.html">Michael
Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-7-lee-child-again.html">Lee
Child: The Visitor</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall.html">Graham
Tattersall: Geekspeak</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/authors-mistakes-8-graham-tattersall_28.html">
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-9-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: A Noble Radiance</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/authors-mistakes-10-007-tomorrow-never.html">007
Tomorrow Never Dies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/authors-mistakes-11-vince-flynn.html">Vince
Flynn: American Assassin</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/authors-mistakes-12-brian-greene.html">Brian
Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-13-john-stack.html">John
Stack: Master of Rome</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-14-dean-crawford.html">Dean
Crawford: Apocalypse</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/authors-mistakes-15-daniel-silva.html">Daniel
Silva: The Fallen Angel</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-16-tom-clancy.html">Tom
Clancy: Locked On</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/authors-mistakes-17-peter-david.html">Peter
David: After Earth</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-18-douglas-preston.html">Douglas
Preston: Impact</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-19-brian-christian.html">Brian
Christian: The Most Human Human</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-20-donna-leon.html">Donna
Leon: Fatal Remedies</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/authors-mistakes-21-sidney-sheldon.html">Sidney
Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-22-david-baldacci.html">David
Baldacci: Zero Day</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/authors-mistakes-23-sidney-sheldon-2.html">Sidney
Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/authors-mistakes-24-csi-miami.html">CSI
Miami</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-25-christopher-l.html">Christopher
L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War</a><br />
<a href="http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/authors-mistakes-26-csi-miami-2-robert.html">CSI Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)</a><br />
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4604011709908623764.post-27807864555777708152014-01-17T19:50:00.001+11:002014-01-17T19:51:15.165+11:00Yet another (stupid) email scam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmY1WIMPwFn-FjSXIqtQXDj7se4PbyxSXq58-MRD4KP_q54fsy2gNWlEBpC_CaouDB5n1b7fGyce3V-rvrryvLWkep211X2K7r-s9CxFPW6ke88RRrOythAEuBSNMHBNqfooZGmSaAEv40/s1600/2014-01-17+Yet+another+%28stupid%29+email+scam.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
A fourth article about Internet scams. This time, I want to
show you how stupid an email scam can be and, once more, how easy it
is to recognise it. Here is a snapshot of the email I received a couple of days ago:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmY1WIMPwFn-FjSXIqtQXDj7se4PbyxSXq58-MRD4KP_q54fsy2gNWlEBpC_CaouDB5n1b7fGyce3V-rvrryvLWkep211X2K7r-s9CxFPW6ke88RRrOythAEuBSNMHBNqfooZGmSaAEv40/s1600/2014-01-17+Yet+another+%28stupid%29+email+scam.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmY1WIMPwFn-FjSXIqtQXDj7se4PbyxSXq58-MRD4KP_q54fsy2gNWlEBpC_CaouDB5n1b7fGyce3V-rvrryvLWkep211X2K7r-s9CxFPW6ke88RRrOythAEuBSNMHBNqfooZGmSaAEv40/s1600/2014-01-17+Yet+another+(stupid)+email+scam.png" height="370" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It is a scam in Italian because it was sent to an Italian email
address of mine (which you can actually see at the bottom of the
image). It says that I have exceeded the PayPal limit (never
heard of such a thing; have you?) and that, according to a new
Italian law (?!?), unless I update my profile information, the
account will be suspended. To update my account, I should
click on the link.<br />
<br />
When I took the snapshot, I hovered with the cursor over the link,
so that the actual link could be captured at the bottom of the email
client's window. The text of the link indicates a secure link
to paypal.com, but the page it is pointing to actually is on
davidserra.es. Either this David Serra from Barcelona is so
stupid that he shows his real domain name, or somebody has
highjacked it. In any case, it is clear that the email has nothing to
do with PayPal.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, why should PayPal send an email from
admin@webbergrp.com?<br />
<br />
In any case, any Italian with a minimum of brain would have
dismissed the scam even without checking the link, because the text
is not grammatically correct. You cannot possibly believe that
PayPal would send emails with grammar mistakes, would you?<br />
<br />
The worst mistake is that the email addresses the customer in three
different ways: with "voi" (a plural "you" also used in the past as
a form of respect), "lei" (a singular "you" with people you don't know), and
"tu" (an informal singular "you"). There are also at least four adjectives
that do not match gender and/or number of the corresponding nouns.<br />
<br />
I wonder whether this David Serra (or whoever the scammer is) has
managed to obtain with this email credit card or banking
information. If he did, I am almost inclined to say that those
"customers" deserved to be scammed because of their stupidity!
Locutushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08731178103175750901noreply@blogger.com3